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DISCOURSE 



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OCCASIONED BY THE 



DEATH OF DANIEL WEBSTER, 



PREACHED AT THE MELODEON 



ON SUNDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1852. 



BY 

THEODORE PARKER, 

MINISTER OP THE TWENTY-EIGHTH CONGREGATIONAL SOCIETY IN BOSTON. 



BOSTON: 

BENJAMIN B. MUSSEY & CO. 
No. 29, Cornuill. 

1853. 



E 



Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by 

THEODORE PARKER, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



BOSTON: 

PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON, SCHOOL STREET. 



PREFACE. 



It is now four months since the delivery of this Sermon. A 
phonographic report of it was published the next morning, and 
quite extensively circulated in all parts of the country. Since 
then, I have taken pains to examine anew the life and actions of 
the distinguished man who is the theme of the discourse. I have 
carefully read all the criticisms on my estimate of him, which came 
to hand ; I have diligently read the most important sermons and 
other discourses which treat of him, and have conversed with per- 
sons who have known Mr. Webster at all the various periods of 
his life. The result is embodied in the following pages.. 

My estimate of Mr. Webster differs from that which seems to 
prevail just now in Church and State ; differs widely, differs pro- 
foundly. I did not suppose that my judgment upon him would 
pass unchallenged. I have not been surprised at the swift con- 
demnation which many men have pronounced upon this sermon, 
— upon the statements therein, and the motives thereto. I should 
be sorry to find that Americans valued a great man so little as to 
have nothing to say in defence of one so long and so conspicuously 
before the public. The violence and rage directed against me is 
not astonishing ; it is not even new. I am not vain enough to 
fancy that I have never been mistaken in a fact of Mr. Web- 
ster's history, or in my judgment pronounced on any of his actions, 
words, or motives. I can only say I have done what I could. 



IV PREFACE. 

If I have committed any errors, I hope they will be pointed out. 
Fifty years hence, the character of Mr. Webster and his eminent 
contemporaries will be better understood than now ; for we have 
not yet all the evidence on which the final judgment of posterity 
will rest. Thomas Hutchinson and John Adams are better known 
now than at the day of their death ; five and twenty years hence 
they will both be better known than at present. 

Boston, March 7, 1853. 



INTRODUCTION. 



TO THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 

Gentlemen, — I address this Discourse to you in particular, 
and by way of introduction will say a few words. 

We are a young nation, three and twenty millions strong, 
rapidly extending in our geographic spread, enlarging rapidly in 
numerical power, and greatening our material strength with a swift- 
ness which has no example. Soon we shall spread over the whole 
continent, and number a hundred million men. America and 
England are but parts of the same nation, — a younger and an 
older branch of the same great Anglo-Saxon stem. Our character 
will affect that of the mother-country, as her good and evil still 
influence us. Considering the important place which the Anglo- 
Saxon tribe holds in the world at this day, — occupying one-eighth 
part of the earth, and controlling one-sixth part of its inhabitants, 
— the national character of England and America becomes one of 
the great human forces which is to control the world for some 
ages to come. 

In the American character there are some commanding and 
noble qualities. We have founded some political and ecclesi- 
astical institutions which seem to me the proudest achievements 
of mankind in Church and State. But there are other qualities 
in the nation's character which are mean and selfish ; we have 



VI INTRODUCTION. 

founded other institutions, or confirmed such as we inherited, 
which were the weakness of a former and darker age, and are 
the shame of this. 

The question comes, Which qualities shall prevail in the charac- 
ter and in the institutions of America, — the noble, or the mean 
and selfish 1 Shall America govern herself by the eternal laws, 
as they are discerned through the conscience of mankind, or by 
the transient appetite of the hour, — the lust for land, for money, 
for power, or fame 1 That is a question for you to settle ; and, 
as you decide for God or mammon, so follows the weal or Avoe of 
millions of men. Our best institutions are an experiment : shall 
it fail ? If so, it will be through your fault. You have the power 
to make it succeed. "We have nothing to fear from any foreign 
foe, much to dread from Wrong at home : will you suffer that to 
work our overthrow 1 

The two chief forms of American action are Business and 
Politics, — the commercial and the political form. The two hum- 
bler forms of our activity, the Church and the Press, — the 
ecclesiastic and the literary form, — are subservient to the others. 
Hence it becomes exceedingly important to study carefully our 
commercial and political action, criticizing both by the Absolute 
Right ; for they control the development of the people, and deter- 
mine our character. • The commercial and political forces of the 
time culminate in the leading politicians, who represent those 
forces in their persons, and direct the energies of the people to 
evil or to good. 

It is for this reason, young men, that I have spoken so many 
times from the pulpit on the great political questions of the day, 
and on the great political men ; for this reason did I preach, and 
now again publish, this Discourse on one of the most eminent 
Americans of our day, — that men may be warned of the evil in 
our Business and our State, and be guided to the Eternal Justice 
which is the foundation of the common weal. There is a Higher 
Law of God, written impcrishably on the nature of things, and in 



INTRODUCTION. Vll 

the nature of man ; and, if this nation continually violates that 
law, then we fall a ruin to the ground. 

If there be any truth, any justice, in my counsel, I hope you 
will be guided thereby ; and, in your commerce and politics, will 
practise on the truth which ages confirm, that Righteousness 
exalteth a Nation, while Injustice is a reproach to any People. 



DISCOURSE. 



When Bossuet, who was himself the eagle of eloquence, 
preached the funeral discourse on Henrietta Maria, daughter 
of Henry the Fourth of France, and wife of Charles the 
First of England, he had a task far easier than mine to-day. 
She was indeed the queen of misfortunes ; the daughter of 
a king assassinated in his own capital, and the widow of a 
king judicially put to death in front of his own palace. Her 
married life was bounded by the murder of her royal sire, 
and the execution of her kingly spouse ; and she died ne- 
glected, far from kith and kin. But for that great man, who 
in his youth was called, prophetically, a "Father of the 
Church," the sorrows of her birth and her estate made it 
easy to gather up the audience in his arms, to moisten the 
faces of men with tears, to show them the nothingness of 
mortal glory, and the beauty of eternal life. He led his 
hearers to his conclusion that day, as the mother lays the 
sobbing child to her bosom to still its grief. 

To-day it is not so with me. Of all my public trials, this 
is my most trying day. Give me your sympathies, my 
friends; remember the difficulty of my position, — its deli- 
cacy too. 



I am to speak of one of the most conspicuous men that 
New England ever bore, — conspicuous, not by accident, 
but by the nature of his mind, — one of her ablest intellects. 
I am to speak of an eminent man, of great power, in a great 
office, one of the landmarks of politics, now laid low. He 
seemed so great that some men thought he was himself one 
of the institutions of America. I am to speak while his 
departure is yet but of yesterday ; while the sombre flags 
still float in our streets. I am no party man ; you know I 
am not. No party is responsible for me, nor I to any one. 
I am free to commend the good things of all parties, — their 
great and good men ; free likewise to censure the evil of all 
parties. You will not ask me to say what only suits the 
public ear : there are a hundred to do that to-day. I do not 
follow opinion because popular. I cannot praise a man 
because he had great gifts, great station, and great opportu- 
nities; I cannot harshly censure a man for trivial mistakes. 
You will not ask me to flatter because others flatter ; to 
condemn because the ruts of condemnation are so deep and 
so easy to travel in. It is unjust to be ungenerous, either in 
praise or blame : only the truth is beautiful in speech. It is 
not reverential to treat a great man like a spoiled child. 
-t of you are old enough to know that good and evil are 
both to be expected of each man. I hope you are all wise 
enough to discriminate between right and wrong. 

Give me your sympathies. This I am sure of, — I shall 
be as tender in my judgment as a woman's love; I will try 
to l.e :is fair as the justice of a man. I shall tax your time 
beyond even my usual wont, for I cannot crush Olympus 
into ;i nut. Be not alarmed: if I tax your time the more, 
I shall tin- y<mr patience less. Such a day as this will never 
conic again to you or inc. There is no Daniel Webster left 
to die, and Nature will not soon give us another such as he. 
I will take can- by my speech that yon sit easy <>n your bench. 
The theme will take care that you remember what I say. 



3 



A great man is the blossom of the world ; the individual 
and prophetic flower, parent of seeds that will be men. This 
is the greatest work of God ; far transcending earth and 
moon and sun, and all the material magnificence of the uni- 
verse. It is " a little lower than the angels," and, like the 
aloe-tree, it blooms but once an age. So we should value, 
love, and cherish it the more. America has not many great 
men living now, — scarce one : there have been few in her 
history. Fertile in multitudes, she is stingy in great men, — 
her works mainly achieved by large bodies of but common 
men. At this day, the world has not many natural masters. 
There is a dearth of great men. England is no better off 
than we her child. Sir Robert Peel has for years been dead. 
Wellington's soul has gone home, and left his body awaiting 
burial. In France, Germany, Italy, and Russia, few great 
men appear. The Revolution of 1848, which found every 
thing else, failed because it found not them. A sad Hunga- 
rian weeps over the hidden crown of Maria Theresa ; and a 
sadder countenance drops a tear for the nation of Dante, and 
the soil of Virgil and Caesar, Lucretius and Cicero. To me 
these two seem the greatest men of Europe now. There 
are great chemists, great geologists, great philologians ; but 
of great men, Christendom has not many. From the highest 
places of politics great men recede, and in all Europe no 
kingly intellect now throbs beneath a royal crown. Even 
Nicholas of Russia is only tall, not great. 

But here let us pause a moment, and see what greatness 
is, looking at the progressive formation of the idea of a great 
man. In general, greatness is eminence of ability ; so there 
are as many different forms thereof as there are qualities 
wherein a man may be eminent. These various forms of 
greatness should be distinctly marked, that, Avhen we say a 
man is great, we may know exactly what we mean. 

In the rudest ages, when the body is man's only tool for 
work or war, eminent strength of body is the thing most 



coveted. Then, and so long as human affairs are controlled 
by brute force, the giant is thought to be the great man, — 
is had in honor for his eminent brute strength. 

When men have a little outgrown that period of force, 
cunning is the quality most prized. The nimble brain out- 
wits the heavy arm, and brings, the circumvented giant to 
the ground. He who can overreach his antagonist, plotting 
more subtly, winning with more deceitful skill; who can turn 
and double on his unseen track, " can smile and smile, and 
be a villain," — he is the great man. 

Brute force is merely animal ; cunning is the animalism of 
the intellect, — the mind's least intellectual element. As 
men go on in their development, finding qualities more valu- 
able than the strength of the lion or the subtlety of the fox, 
they come to value higher intellectual faculties, — great 
understanding, great imagination, great reason. Power to 
think is then the faculty men value most; ability to devise 
means, for attaining ends desired ; the power to originate 
ideas, to express them in speech, to organize them into insti- 
tutions; to organize things into a machine, men into an 
army, or a state, or a gang of operatives ; to administer these 
various organizations. He who is eminent in this ability is 
thought the great man. 

But there are qualities nobler than the mere intellect, 
the moral, the affectional, the religious faculties, — the power 
of justice, of love, of holiness, of trust in God, and of obe- 
dience to his law, — the Eternal Right. These are the 
highest qualities of man : whoso is most eminent therein is 
the greatest of great men. He is as much above the merely 
intellectual great men, as they above the men of mere cun- 
ning or of force. 

Thus, then, we have four different kinds of greatness. Let 
me name them bodily greatness, crafty greatness, intellectual 
greatness, religious greatness. Men in different degrees of 
development will value the different kinds of greatness. 



Belial cannot yet honor Christ. How can the little girl ap- 
preciate Aristotle and Kant ? The child thinks as a child. 
You must have manhood in you to honor it in others, even 
to see it. 

Yet how we love to honor men eminent in such modes of 
greatness as we can understand ! Indeed, we must do so. 
Soon as we really see a real great man, his magnetism 
draws us, will we or no. Do any of you remember when, 
for the first time in adult years, you stood beside the ocean, 
or some great mountain of New Hampshire, or Virginia, or 
Pennsylvania, or the mighty mounts that rise in Switzer- 
land ? Do you remember what emotions came upon you at 
the awful presence ? But if you were confronted by a man 
of vast genius, of colossal history and achievements, im- 
mense personal power of wisdom, justice, philanthropy, 
religion, of mighty power of will and mighty act; if you 
feel him as you feel the mountain and the sea, what grander 
emotions spring up ! It is like making the acquaintance of 
one of the elementary forces of the earth, — like associating 
with gravitation itself! The stiffest neck bends over: down 
go the democratic knees ; human nature is loyal then ! A 
New England shipmaster, wrecked on an island in the 
Indian Sea, was seized by his conquerors, and made their 
chief. Their captive became their king. After years of 
rule, he managed to escape. When he once more* visited 
his former realm, he found that the savages had carried him 
to heaven, and worshipped him as a god greater than their 
fancied deities : he had revolutionized divinity, and was 
himself enthroned as a god. Why so ? In intellectual 
qualities, in religious qualities, he was superior to their idea 
of God, and so they worshipped him. So loyal is human 
nature to its great men. 

Talk of Democracy ! — we are all looking for a master; 
a man manlier than we. We are always looking for a great 
man to solve the difficulty too hard for us, to break the 



rock which lies in our way, — to represent the possibility of 
human nature as an ideal, and then to realize that ideal in 
his life. Little boys in the country, working against' time, 
with stents to do, long for the passing-by of some tall bro- 
ther, who in a few minutes shall achieve what the smaller 
boy took hours to do. And we are all of us but little boys, 
looking for some great brother to come and help us end our 
tasks. 

But it is not quite so easy to recognize the greatest kind 
of greatness. A Nootka-Sound Indian would not see much 
in Leibnitz, Newton, Socrates, or Dante ; and if a great 
man were to come as much before us as we are before the 
Nootka-Sounders, what should we say of him ? Why, the 
worst names we could devise, — Infidel, Atheist, Blasphe- 
mer, Hypocrite. Perhaps we should dig up the old cross, 
and make a new martyr of the man posterity will worship 
as a deity. It is the men who are up that see the rising sun, 
not the sluggards. It takes greatness to see greatness, and 
know it at the first ; I mean to see greatness of the highest 
kind. Bulk, anybody can see ; bulk of body or mind. The 
loftiest form of greatness is never popular in its time. Men 
cannot understand or receive it. Guinea negroes would 
think a juggler a greater man than Franklin. What would 
be thought of Martin Luther at Rome, of Washington at St. 
Petersburg, of Fenelon among the Sacs and Foxes ? Herod 
and Pilate were popular in their day, — men of property 
and standing. They got nominations and honor enough. 
Jesus of Nazareth got no nomination, got a cross between 
two thieves, was crowned with thorns, and, when he died, 
eleven Galileans gathered together to lament their Lord. 
Any man can measure a walking-stick, — so many hands 
Ions, and so many nails beside ; but it takes a mountain- 
intellect to measure the Andes and Altai. 

But, now and then, God creates a mighty man, who 
greatly influences mankind. Sometimes he reaches far on 



into other ages. Such a man, if he be of the greatest, will, 
by and by, unite in himself the four chief forces of society, 
— business, politics, literature, and the church. Himself a 
stronger force than all of these, he will at last control the 
commercial, political, literary, and ecclesiastical action of 
mankind. But just as he is greater than other men, in the 
highest mood of greatness, will he at first be opposed, and 
hated too. The tall house in the street darkens the grocer's 
window opposite, and he must strike his light sooner than 
before. The inferior great man does not understand the man 
of superior modes of eminence. Sullenly the full moon at 
morning pales her ineffectual light before the rising day. In 
the Greek fable, jealous Saturn devours the new gods whom 
he feared, foreseeing the day when the Olympian dynasty 
would turn him out of heaven. To the natural man the 
excellence of the spiritual is only foolishness. What do you 
suppose the best educated Pharisees in Jerusalem thought of 
Jesus ? They thought him an infidel : " He blasphemeth." 
They called him crazy : " he hath a devil." They mocked 
at the daily beauty of his holiness : he had " broken the 
sabbath." They reviled at his philanthropy : it was " eating 
with publicans and sinners." 

Human nature loves to reverence great men, and often 
honors many a little one under the mistake that he is great. 
See how nations honor the greatest great men, — Moses, 
Zoroaster, Socrates, Jesus — that loftiest of men ! But by 
how many false men have we been deceived, — men whose 
light leads to bewilder, and dazzles to blind ! If a preacher 
is a thousand years before you and me, we cannot understand 
him. If only a hundred years of thought shall separate us, 
there is a great gulf between the two, whereover neither 
Dives nor Abraham, nor yet Moses himself, can pass. It is 
a false great man often who gets possession of the pulpit, 
with his lesson for to-day, which is no lesson ; and a false 
great man who gets a throne, with his lesson for to-day, 



8 



which is also no lesson. Men great in little things are sure 
of their pay. It is all ready, subject to their order. 

A little man is often mistaken for a great one. The pos- 
session of office, of accidental renown, of imposing qualities, 
of brilliant eloquence, often dazzles the beholder ; and he 
reverences a show. 

How much a great man of the highest kind can do for us, 
and how easy ! It is not harder for a cloud to thunder, than 
for a chestnut in a farmer's fire to snap. Dull Mr. Jingle 
urges along his restive, hardmouthed donkey, besmouched 
with mire, and wealed with many a stripe, amid the laughter 
of the boys ; while, by his proper motion, swan-like Milton 
flies before the faces of mankind, which are new lit with 
admiration at the poet's rising flight, his garlands and sing- 
ing robes about him, till the aspiring glory transcends the 
sight, yet leaves its track of beauty trailed across the sky. 

Intellect' and conscience are conversant with ideas, — with 
absolute truth and absolute right, as the norm of conduct. 
But, with most men, the affections are developed in advance 
of the intellect and the conscience ; and the affections want 
a person. In his actions, a man of great intellect embodies a 
principle, good or bad ; and, by the affections, -men accept 
the great intellectual man, bad or good, and with him the 
principle he has got. 

As the affections are so large in us, how delightful is it for 
us to see a great man, honor him, love him, reverence him, 
trust him ! Crowds of men come to look upon a hero's 
face, who are all careless of his actions and heedless of his 
thought ; they know not his what, nor his whence, nor his 
whither ; his person passes for reason, justice, and religion. 

They say that women have the most of this affection, and 
so are most attachable, most swayed by persons, — least by 
ideas. Woman's mind and conscience, and her soul, they 
say, are easily crushed into her all-embracing heart ; and 
truth, justice, and holiness are trodden under foot by her 



affection, rushing towards its object. "What folly!" say 
men. But, when a man of large intellect comes, he is wont 
to make women of us all, and take us by the heart. Each 
great intellectual man, if let alone, will have an influence in 
proportion to his strength of mind and will, — the good great 
man, the bad great man ; for as each particle of matter has 
an attractive force, which affects all other matter, so each 
particle of mind has an attractive force, which draws all other 
mind. 

How pleasant it is to love and reverence ! To idle men 
how much more delightful is it than to criticize a man, take 
him to pieces, weighing each part, and considering every 
service done or promised, and then decide ! Men are con- 
tinually led astray by misplaced reverence. Shall we be 
governed by the mere instinct of veneration, uncovering to 
every man who demands our obeisance ? Man is to rule 
himself, and not be over-mastered by any instinct subordi- 
nating the whole to a special part. We ought to know if 
what we follow be real greatness or seeming greatness ; and 
of the real greatness, of what kind it is, — eminent cun- 
ning, eminent intellect, or eminence of religion. For men 
ought not td gravitate passively, drawn by the bulk of big- 
ness, but consciously and freely to follow eminent wisdom, 
justice, love, and faith in God. Hence it becomes exceed- 
ingly important to study the character of all eminent men ; 
for they represent great social forces for good or ill. 

It is true, great men ought to be tried by their peers. But 
" a cat may look upon a king," and, if she is to enter his 
service, will do well to look before she leaps. It is dastardly 
in a democrat to take a master with less scrutiny than he 
would buy an ox. 

Merchants watch the markets: they know what ship 

brings corn, what hemp, what coal; how much cotton there 

is at New York or New Orleans ; how much gold in the 

banks. They learn these things, because they live by the 

3 



10 



market, and seek to get money by their trade. Politicians 
■watch the turn of the people and the coming vote, because 
they live by the ballot-box^ and wish to get honor and office 
by their skill. So a minister, who would guide men to 
wisdom, justice, love, and piety, to human welfare, — he 
must watch the great men, and know what quantity of truth, 
of justice, of love, and of faith there is in Calhoun, Webster, 
Clay ; because he is to live by the word of God, and only 
asks, " Thy kingdom come ! " 

What a great power is a man of large intellect ! Aristotle 
rode on the neck of science for two thousand years, till 
Bacon, charging down from the vantage-ground of twenty 
centuries, with giant spear unhorsed the Stagyrite, and 
mounted there himself; himself in turn to be unhorsed. 
What a profound influence had Frederick in Germany for 
half a century ! — Napoleon in Europe for the last fifty 
years ! What an influence Sir Robert Peel and Wellington 
have had in England for the last twenty or thirty years ! 
Jefferson yet leads the democracy of the United States ; the 
dead hand of Hamilton still consolidates the several States. 
Dead men of great intellect speak from the pulpit. Law 
is of mortmain. In America it is above all things necessary 
to study the men of eminent mind, even the men of eminent 
station ; for their power is greater here than elsewhere in 
Christendom. Money is our only material, greatness our 
only personal nobility. In England, the influence of power- 
ful men is checked by the great families, the great classes, 
with their ancestral privileges consolidated into institutions, 
and the hereditary crown. Here we have no such families ; 
historical men are not from or for such, seldom had historic fa- 
thers, seldom leave historic sons. Tempus ferax hominum, edax 
hominum. Fruitful of men is time ; voracious also of men. 

Even while the individual family continues rich, political 
unity does not remain in its members, if numerous, more 
than a single generation. Nay, it is only in families of re- 
markable stupidity that it lasts a single age. 



11 



In this country the swift decay of powerful families is a 
remarkable fact. Nature produces only individuals, not 
classes. It is a wonder how many famous Americans leave 
no children at all. Hancock, and Samuel Adams, Wash- 
ington, Madison, Jackson — each was a childless flower, that 
broke oft' the top of the family tree, which after them dwin- 
dled down, and at length died out. It has been so with 
European stocks of eminent stature. Bacon, Shakspeare, 
Leibnitz, Newton, Descartes, and Kant died and left no sign. 
"With strange self-complaisance said the first of these, " Great 
benefactors have been childless men." Here and there an 
American family continues to bear famous fruit, generation 
after generation. A single New England tree, rooted far 
off in the Marches of Wales, is yet green with life, though it 
has twice blossomed with Presidents ; but in general, if the 
great American leave sons, the wonder is what becomes of 
them, — so little, they are lost, — a single needle from the 
American pine, to strew the forest floor amid the other litter 
of the woods. 

No great families here hold great men in check. There 
is no permanently powerful class. The mechanic is father 
of the merchant, who will again be the grandsire of mecha- 
nics. In thirty years, half the wealth of Boston will be in 
the hands of men now poor ; and, where power of money is 
of yesterday, it is no great check to any man of large intel- 
lect, industry, and will. Here is no hereditary power. So 
the personal power of a great mind, for good or evil, is 
free from that three-fold check it meets in other lands, and 
becomes of immense importance. 

Our nation is a great committee of the whole ; our State 
is a provisional government, riches our only heritable good, 
greatness our only personal nobility ; office is elective. To 
the ambition of a great bad man, or the philanthropy of a 
great good man, there is no check but the power of money 
or numbers ; no check from great families, great classes, or 



12 



hereditary privileges. If our man of large intellect runs up 
bill, there is nothing to check him but the jnertia of mankind ; 
if he runs down hill, that also is on his side. 

With us the great mind is amenable to no conventional 
standard measure, as in England or Europe, — only to public 
opinion. And that public opinion is controlled by money and 
numbers ; for these are the two factors of the American 
product, the multiplier and the multiplicand, — millions of 
money, millions of men. 

A great mind is like an elephant in the line of ancient 
battle, — the best ally, if you can keep him in the ranks, 
fronting the right way ; but, if he turn about, he is the fatal- 
cst foe, and treads his master underneath his feet. Great 
minds have a trick of turning round. 

Taking all these things into consideration, you see how 
important it is to scrutinize all the great men, — to know 
their quantity and quality, — before we allow them to take 
our heart. To do this is to measure one of the most power- 
ful popular forces for guiding the present and shaping the 
future. Every office is to be filled by the people's vote, — 
that of public president and private cook. Franklin intro- 
duced new philanthropy to the law of nations. Washington 
changed men's ideas of political greatness. If Napoleon the 
Present goes unwhipped of justice, he will change those 
ideas again ; not for the world, but for the saloons of Paris, 
for its journals and its mob. 

How different are conspicuous men to different eyes ! 
The city corporation of Toulouse has just addressed this peti- 
tion to Napoleon : — 

" Moxseicnieur, — Tho government of the world by Providence is the 
most perfect. France and Europe 6tyle you the elect of God for the 
accomplishment of his designs. It belongs to no Constitution whatever to 
assign a term for the divine mission with which you are entrusted. In- 
spire yourself with this thought, — to restore to the country those tutelar 
institutions, which form tho stability of power and the dignity of na- 
tions." 



13 



That is a prayer addressed to the Prince President of 
France, whose private vices are equalled only by his public 
sins. How different he looks to different men ! To me he 
is Napoleon the Little ; to the Mayor and Aldermen of Tou- 
louse, he is the Elect of God, with irresponsible power to 
rule as long and as badly as likes him best. Well said Sir 
Philip Sidney, " Spite of the ancients, there is not a piece 
of wood in the world out of which a Mercury may not be 
made." 

It is this importance of great men which has led me to 
speak of them so often ; not only of men great by nature, 
but great by position on money or office, or by reputation ; 
men substantially great, and men great by accident. Hence 
I spoke of Dr. Channing, whose word went like morning 
over the continents. Hence I spoke of John Quincy Adams, 
and did not fear to point out every error I thought I dis- 
covered in the great man's track, which ended so proudly in 
the right ; and I did homage to all the excellence I found, 
though it was the most unpopular excellence. Hence I 
spoke of General Taylor ; yes, even of General Harrison, a 
very ordinary man, but available, and accidentally in a great 
station. You see why this ought to be done. We are a 
young nation ; a great man easily gives us the impression of 
his hand ; we shall harden in the fire of centuries, and keep 
the mark. Stamp a letter on Chaldean clay, and how very 
frail it seems ! but burn that clay in the fire, — and, though 
Nineveh shall perish, and Babylon become a heap of ruins, 
that brick keeps the arrow-headed letter to this day. As 
with bricks, so with nations. 

Ere long, these three and twenty millions will become a 
hundred millions; then perhaps a thousand millions, spread 
over all the continent, from the Arctic to the Antarctic Sea. 
It is a good thing to start with men of great religion for our 
guides. The difference between a Moses and a Maximian 
will be felt by many millions of men, and for many an age, 



14 



after death has effaced both from the earth. The dead 
hand of Moses yet circumcises every Hebrew boy ; that of 
mediaeval doctors of divinity still clutches the clergyman by 
the throat; the dead barons of Runnymede even now keep 
watch, and vindicate for us all a trial by the law of the land, 
administered by our peers. 

A man of eminent abilities may do one of two things in 
influencing men : either he may extend himself at right 
angles with the axis of the human march, lateralize himself, 
spreading widely, and have a great power in his own age, 
putting his opinion into men's heads, his will into their 
action, and yet may never reach far onward into the future. 
In America, he will gain power in his time, by having the 
common sentiments and ideas, and an extraordinary power 
to express and show their value ; great power of comprehen- 
sion, of statement, and of will. Such a man differs from 
others in quantity, not quality. Where all men have con- 
siderable, he has a great deal. His power may be repre- 
sented by two parallel lines, the one beginning where his 
influence begins, the other where his influence ends. His 
power will be measured by the length of the lines laterally, 
and the distance betwixt the parallels. That is one thing. 

Or a great man may extend himself forward, in the line of 
the human march, himself a prolongation of the axis of man- 
kind : not reaching far sideways in his own time, he reaches 
forward immensely, his influence widening as it goes. He 
will do this by superiority in sentiments, ideas, and actions ; 
by eminence of justice and of affection ; by eminence of 
religion : he will differ in quality as well as quantity, and 
have much where the crowd has nothing at all. His power 
also may be represented by two lines, both beginning at his 
birth, pointing forwards, diverging from a point, reaching far 
into the future, widening as they extend, containing time by 
their stretch, and space by their spread. Jesus of Nazareth 
was of this class : he spread laterally in his life-time, and 



15 

took in twelve Galilean peasants and a few obscure women ; 
now his diverging lines reach over two thousand years in 
their stretch, and contain two hundred and sixty millions 
of men within their spread. 

So much, my friends, and so long, as preface to this 
estimate of a great man. Daniel Webster was a man of 
eminent abilities : for many years the favored son of New 
England. He was seventy years old ; nearly forty years in 
the councils of the nation ; held high office in times of peril 
and doubt; had a commanding eloquence — there were two 
million readers for every speech he spoke ; and for the last 
two years he has had a vast influence on the opinion of 
the North. He has done service ; spoken noble words that 
will endure so long as English lasts. He has largely held 
the nation's eye. His public office made his personal charac- 
ter conspicuous. Great men have no privacy ; their bed 
and their board are both spread in front of the sun, and their 
private character is a public force. Let us see what he did, 
and what he was ; what is the result for the present, what 
for the future. 

Daniel Webster was born at Salisbury, N. H. on the 
borders of civilization, on the 18th of January, 1782. He 
was the son of Capt. Ebenezer and Abigail Eastman Web- 
ster. 

The mother of Capt. Webster was a Miss Bachelder, of 
Hampton, where Thomas Webster, the American founder 
of the family, settled in 1636. She was descended from the 
Rev. Stephen Bachiller, formerly of Lynn in Massachusetts, 
a noted man in his time, unjustly, or otherwise, driven out 
of the colony by the Puritans. Ebenezer Webster, in his 
early days, lived as "boy" in the service of Col. Ebenezer 
Stevens, of Kingstoh, from whom he received a " lot of 
land " in Stevenstown, now Salisbury. In 1764 Mr. Web- 



16 



ster built himself a log-cabin on the premises, and lighted 
his fire. His land "lapped on" to the wilderness; no New 
Englander being so near the North Star, it is said. The 
family was any thing but rich, living first in a log-cabin, then 
in a frame-house, and some time keeping tavern. 

The father was a soldier of the French war, and in the 
Revolution ; a great, brave, big, brawny man, " high- 
breasted and broad-shouldered," " with heavy eyebrows," 
and " a heart which he seemed to have borrowed from a 
lion ; " "a dark man," so black that " you could not tell 
when his face was covered with gunpowder ; " six feet high, 
and both in look "and manners "uncommon rough." He 
was a shifty man of many functions, — a farmer, a saw- 
miller, " something of a blacksmith," a captain in the early 
part of the Revolutionary War, a colonel of militia, repre- 
sentative and senator in the New Hampshire legislature, and 
finally Judge of the Court of Common Pleas ; yet " he never 
saw the inside of a school-house." In his early married life, 
food sometimes failed on the rough farm : then the stout 
man and his neighbors took to the woods, and brought 
home many a fat buck in their day. 

The mother, one of the " black Eastmans," was a quite 
superior woman. It is often so. When virtue leaps high 
in the public fountain, you seek for the lofty spring of 
nobleness, and find it far ofF in the dear breast of some 
mother, who melted the snows of winter, and condensed the 
summer's dew into fair, sweet humanity, which now glad- 
dens the face of man in all the city streets. Bulk is bearded 
and masculine; niceness is of woman's gendering. 

Daniel Webster was fortunate in the outward circum- 
stances of his birth and breeding. He came from that class 
in society whence almost all the great men of America have 
come, — the two Adamses, Washington, Hancock, Jefferson, 
Jackson, Clay, and almost every living notable of our time. 
New Hampshire herself has furnished a large number of self- 



17 



reliant and able-headed men, who have fought their way in 
the world with their own fist, and won eminent stations at 
the last. The little, rough State breeds professors and sena- 
tors, merchants and hardy lawyers, in singular profusion. 
Our Hercules was also cradled on the ground. When he 
visited the West, a few years ago, an emigrant from New 
Hampshire met him in Ohio, recognized him, and asked, 
" Is this the son of Capt. Webster ? " " It is, indeed," said 
the great man. " What ! " said he, " is this the little black 
Dan that used to water the horses ? " And the great Daniel 
Webster said, " It is the little black Dan that used to water 
the horses." He was proud of his history. If a man finds 
the way alone, should he not be proud of having found the 
way, and got out of the woods ? 

He had small opportunities for academical education. 
The schoolmaster was "abroad" in New Hampshire; he 
was seldom at home in Salisbury. Only two or three 
months in the year was there a school ; often only a mova- 
ble school, that ark of the Lord, shifting from place to 
place. Sometimes it was two or three miles from Capt. 
Webster's. Once it was stationary in a log-house. Thither 
went Daniel Webster, " carrying his dinner in a tin pail," a 
brave, bright boy: " The child is father of the man." The 
common-school of America is the cradle of all her greatness. 
How many Presidents has she therein rocked to vigorous 
manhood ! But Mr. Webster's school-time was much inter- 
rupted: there were "chores to be done" at home; the 
saw-mill to be tended in winter ; and, in summer, Daniel 
"must ride horse to plough;" and in planting-time, and hay- 
time, and harvest, have many a day stolen from his scanty 
seed-time of learning. In his father's tavern-barn, the 
future Secretary gave a rough currying, " after the fashion 
of the times," to the sorry horse of many a traveller, and in 
the yard of the inn yoked the oxen of many a New Hamp- 
shire teamster. " Cast the bantling on the rocks." 
4 



18 



When fourteen years old, he went to Phillips Academy * 
at Exeter for a few months; then to study with Rev. Mr. 
Wood at Boscawen, paying a "dollar a week" for the 
food of the body and for the food of the mind. In the 
warm weather, " Daniel went barefoot, and wore tow trou- 
sers and a tow shirt, his only garments at that season," 
spun, woven, and made up by his diligent mother. " He 
helped do the things" about Mr. Wood's barn and wood- 
pile, and so diminished the pecuniary burthen of his father. 
But Mr. Wood had small Latin and less Greek, and only 
taught what he knew. Daniel was an ambitious boy, and 
apt to learn. Men wonder that some men can do so much 
with so little outward furniture. The wonder is the other 
way. He was more college than the college itself, and 
had a university in his head. It takes time, and the sweat 
of oxen, and the shouting of drivers, goading and whip- 
ping, to get a cart-load of cider to the top of Mount 
Washington ; but the eagle flies there on his own wide 
wings, and asks no help. Daniel Webster had little aca- 
demic furniture to help him. He had the mountains of 
New Hampshire, and his own great mountain of a head. 
Was that a bad outfit ? No millionnaire can buy it for a 
booby-son. 

There was a British sailor, with a wife but no child, an old 
" man-of-war's-man " living hard by Capt. Webster's, fond of 
fishing and hunting, of hearing the newspapers read, and of 
telling his stories to all comers. He had considerable infiu- 
ence on the young boy, and never wore out of his memory. 

There was a small social library at Salisbury, whence a 
bright boy could easily draw the water of life for his intel- 

• At the commemoration of *Ir. Abbott's fiftieth anniversary as Preceptor 
of rhillips Academy, a time when " English was of no more account at Exeter 
than silver at Jerusulem in the days of King Solomon," Mr. Abbott sat 
between Mr. Webster and Mr. Everett, both of them his former pupils. Mr. 
John P. Hale, in his neat speech, said, " If you had done nothing else but 
instruct these two, you might say, Exeqi moncmentcm .ebe pbhennius. 



19 

lect; at home was the Farmers' Almanac, with its riddles 
and "poetry," Watts's Hymns and the Bible, the insepa- 
rable companion of the New England man. Daniel was 
fond of poetry, and, before he was ten years old, knew dear 
old Isaac Watts all by heart. He thought all books were to 
be got by heart. I said he loved to learn. One day his 
father said to him, " I shall send you to college, Daniel;" 
and Daniel laid his head on his father's shoulder, and wept 
right out. In reading and spelling he surpassed his teacher ; 
but his hard hands did not take kindly to writing, and the 
schoolmaster told him his " fingers were destined to the 
plough-tail." 

He was not a strong boy, was " a crying baby " that wor- 
ried his mother; but a neighbor "prophesied," "You will take 
great comfort in him one day." As he grew up, he was " the 
slimmest of the family," a farmer's youngest boy, and " not 
good for much." He did not love work. It was these 
peculiarities which decided Capt. Webster to send Daniel to 
college. 

The time came for him to go to college. His father 
once carried him to Dartmouth in a wagon. On the way 
thither, they passed a spot which Capt. Webster remembered 
right well. " When you were a little baby," said he, " in 
the winter we were out of provisions, I went into the woods 
with the gun to find something to eat. In that spot yon- 
der, then all covered with woods, I found a herd of deer. 
The snow was very deep, and they had made themselves a 
pen, and were crowded together in great numbers. As they 
could not get out, I took my choice, and picked out a fine, 
fat stag. I walked round and looked at him, with my knife 
in my hand. As I looked the noble fellow in the face, the 
great tears rolled down his cheeks, and I could not touch 
him. But I thought of you, Daniel, and your mother, and 
the rest of the little ones, and carried home the deer." 

He can hardly be said to have "entered college:" he only 



20 



"broke in," so slenderly was he furnished with elementary 
knowledge. This deficiency of elementary instruction in 
the classic tongues and in mathematics was a sad misfor- 
tune in his later life. . 

At college, like so many other New Hampshire boys, he 
" paid his own way," keeping school in the vacation. One 
year he paid his board by "doing the literature" for a 
weekly newspaper. He graduated at Dartmouth in his 
twentieth year, largely distinguished, though he scorned his 
degree ; and, when the faculty gave him his diploma, he tore 
it to pieces in the college-yard, in presence of some of his 
mates, it is said, and trod it under foot. 

When he graduated, he was apparently of a feeble consti- 
tution, " long, slender, pale, and all eyes," with " teeth as 
white as a hound's;" thick, black hair clustered about his 
ample forehead. At first he designed to study theology, but 
his father's better judgment overruled the thought. 

After graduating, he continued to fight for his education, 
studying law with one hand, keeping school with the other, 
and yet finding a third hand — this Yankee Briareus — to 
serve as Register of Deeds. This he did at Fryeburg in 
Maine, borrowing a copy of Blackstone's Commentaries, 
which he was too poor to buy. In a long winter-evening, by 
copying two deeds, he could earn fifty cents. He used his 
money, thus severely earned, to help his older brother, 
Ezekiel, " Black Zeke," as he was called, to college. Both 
were " heinously unprovided." 

Then he came to Boston, with no letters of introduction, 
raw, awkward, and shabby in his dress, his rough trousers 
ceasing a long distance above his feet. He sought admit- 
tance as a clerk to more than one office before he found a 
place; an eminent lawyer, rudely turning him off, "would 
not have such a fellow in the office ! " Mr. Gore, a man of 
large reputation, took in the unprotected youth, who "came 
to work, not to play." Here he struggled with poverty and 



21 



the law. Ezekiel, not yet graduated, came also and took 
a school in Short-street. Daniel helped his brother in the 
school. Edward Everett was one of the pupils, a "mar- 
vellous boy," with no equal, it was thought, in all New 
England, making the promise he has since fulfilled. 

Mr. Webster was admitted to the bar in 1805, with a 
prophecy of eminence from Mr. Gore, — a prophecy which 
might easily be made : such a head was its own fortune- 
teller. His legal studies over, refusing a lucrative office, he 
settkd down as a lawyer at B6scawen, in New Hampshire. 
Thence went to Portsmouth in 1807, a lawyer of large 
talents, getting rapidly into practice ; " known all over the 
State of New Hampshire," known also in Massachusetts. 
He attended to literature, wrote papers in the Monthly An- 
thology, a periodical published in the " Athens of America" 

— so Boston was then called. He printed a rhymed version 
of some of the odes of Horace, and wrote largely for the 
" Portsmouth Oracle." 

In 1808 he married Miss Grace Fletcher, an attractive 
and beautiful woman, one year older than himself, the daugh- 
ter of the worthy minister of Hopkinton, N. H. By this 
marriage he was the father of two daughters and two sons. 
But, alas for him ! this amiable and beloved woman ceased 
to be mortal in 1828. 

In 1812, when thirty years of age, he was elected to the 
House of Representatives. In 1814 his house was burned, 

— a great loss to the young man, never thrifty, and then 
struggling for an estate. He determined to quit New Hamp- 
shire, and seek a place in some more congenial spot. New 
Hampshire breeds great lawyers, but not great fortunes. 
He hesitated for a while between Boston and Albany. " He 
doubted ; " so he wrote to a friend, if he " could make a 
living in Boston." But he concluded to try ; and in 1816 
he removed to Boston, in the State which had required his 
ancestor, Rev. Stephen Bachiller, "to forbeare exercising 



\/ 



22 



his gifts as a pastor or teacher publiquely in the Pattent," 
" for his contempt of authority, and till some scandles be 
removed." * 

In 1820, then thirty-eight years old, he is a member of 
the Massachusetts Convention, and is one of the leading 
members there ; provoking the jealousy, but at the same time 
distancing the rivalry, of young men Boston born and Cam- 
bridge bred. His light, taken from under the New Hampshire 
bushel at Portsmouth, could not be hid in Boston. It gives 
light to all that enter the house. In 1822 he was electe/1 to 
Congress from Boston ; in 1827, to the.Senate of the United 
States. In 1841 he was Secretary of State ; again a private 
citizen in 1843 ; in the Senate in 1845, and Secretary of 
State in 1850, where he continued, until, "on the 24th of 
October, 1852, all that was mortal of Daniel Webster was 
no more ! " 

He was ten days in the General Court of Massachusetts ; 
a few weeks in her Convention ; eight years Representative 
in Congress ; nineteen, Senator ; five, Secretary of State. 
Sach is a condensed map of his outward history. 



Look next at the Headlands of his life. Here I shall 
speak of his deeds and words as a citizen and public officer. 

He was a great lawyer, engaged in many of the most im- 
portant cases during the last forty years ; but, in the briefness 
of a sermon, I must pass by his labors in the law. 

I know that much of his present reputation depends on 
his achievements as a lawyer ; as an " expounder of the Con- 
stitution." Unfortunately, it is not possible for me to say 
how much credit belongs to Mr. Webster for his constitu- 
tional arguments, and how much to the late Judge Story. 
The publication of the correspondence between these gentle- 

• Records of Mass. General Court, Oct. 3, 1632. 



23 



men will perhaps help settle the matter ; but still much 
exact legal information was often given by word of mouth, 
during personal interviews, and that must for ever remain t 
hidden from all bu. him who gave and him who took. How- 
ever, from 1816 to 1842, Mr. Webster was in the habit of 
drawing from that deep and copious well of legal know- 
ledge, whenever his own bucket was dry. Mr. Justice 
Story was the Jupiter Pluvius.from whom Mr. Webster often 
sought to elicit peculiar thunder for his speeches, and private 
rain for his own public tanks of law. The statesman got the 
lawyer to draft bills, to make suggestions, to furnish facts, 
precedents, laAv, and ideas. He went on this aquilician 
business, asking aid, now in a " bankruptcy bill," in 1816 
and 1825 ; then in questions of the law of nations, in 
1827 ; next in matters of criminal law in 1830 ; then of con- 
stitutional law in 1832 ; then in relation to the North- 
eastern boundary in 1838 ; in matters of international law 
again, in his negotiations with Lord Ashburton, in 1S42. 
" You can do more for me than all the rest of the world," 
wrote the Secretary of State, April 9, 1842, " because you 
can give me the lights I most want; and, if you furnish 
them, I shall be confident that they will be true lights. I 
shall trouble you greatly the nex't three months." And 
again, July 16, 1842, he writes, "Nobody but yourself can do 
iliis." But, alas ! in his later years the beneficiary sought to 
conceal the source of his supplies. Jupiter Pluvius had him- 
self been summoned before the court of the Higher Law. 

Much of Mr. Webster's fame as a Constitutional lawyer 
rests on his celebrated argument in the Dartmouth College 
case. But it is easy to see that the facts, the law, the prece- 
dents, the ideas, and the conclusions of that argument, had 
almost all of them been presented by Messrs. Mason and 
Smith in the previous trial of the case.* 

* See the Report of the Case of the Trustees of Dartmouth College, &c. 
Portsmouth, N. H. [1819.] 



24 

Let me speak of the public acts of Mr. Webster in his 
capacity as a private citizen. Here I shall speak of him 
chiefly as a public orator. 

Two juvenile orations of his are still preserved, delivered 
while he was yet a lad in college.* One is a fourth of July 
oration, — a performance good enough for a lad of eighteen, 
but hardly indicating the talents of its author. The senti- 
ments probably belong to the neighborhood, and the diction 
to the authorities of the college : — 

" Fair Science, too, holds her -gentle empire amongst us, and almost 
innumerable altars are raised to her divinity from Brunswick to Florida. 
Yale, Providence, and Harvard now grace our land ; and Dartmouth, 
towering majestic above the groves which encircle her, now inscribes her 
glory on the registers of fame ! Oxford and Cambridge, those oriental 
stars of literature, shall now be lost, while the bright sun of American 
science displays his broad circumference in uneclipsed radiance." — p. 10. 

Here is an opinion which he seems to have entertained at 
the end of his life. He speaks of the formation of the Con- 
stitution : — 

"We then saw the people of these States engaged in a transaction, 
which is undoubtedly the greatest approximation towards human perfec- 
tion the political world ever yet experienced ; and which will perhaps 
for ever stand, in the history of mankind, without a parallel." — p. 8, 9. 



* "An Oration pronounced at Hanover, N. H. the 4th day of July, 1800, 
being the Twenty-fourth Anniversary of Independence, by Daniel Webster, 
member of the Junior Class, Dartmouth University. 

" Do tliou, great Liberty, inspire our souls, 
And make our lives in thy possession happy, 
Or our deaths glorious in thy just defence," &c. 

"Hanover, 1800." 8vo. pp.15. 

"Funeral Oration, occasioned by the Death of Ephraim Simonds, of 
Tcmpleton, Mass., a Member of the Senior Class in Dartmouth College, who 
died at Hanover (N. IL), on the 18th of June, 1801, set. 26. By Daniel 
Webster, a class-mate of the deceased. Et vix sentiunt dicere lingua. Vale. 
Hanover, 1801." 8vo. pp. 13. 



25 



In 1806, he delivered another Fourth -of- July address at 
Concord, N. H., # containing many noble and generous opi- 
nions : — 

" Patriotism," said he, " hath a source of consolation that cheers tho 
heart in these unhappy times, when good men are rendered odious, and 
bad men popular ; when great men are made little, and little men are 
made great. A genuine patriot, above the reach of personal considerations, 
with his eye and his heart on the honor and the happiness of his country, 
is a character as easy and as satisfactory to himself as venerable in the 
eyes of the world. While his country enjoys freedom and peace, he will 
rejoice and be thankful ; and, if it be in the councils of Heaven to send tlie 
storm and the tempest, he meets the tumult of the political elements with 
composure and dignity. Above fear, above danger, above reproach, he 
feels that the last- end which can happen to any man never comes too soon, 
if he fall in defence of the law and the liberty of his country." — p. 21. 

In 1812, he delivered a third Fourth-of-July address at 
Portsmouth.! The political storm is felt in the little harbor 
of Portsmouth, and the speaker swells with the tumult of the 
sea. He is hostile to France; averse to the war with Eng- 
land, then waging, yet ready to fight and pay taxes for it. 
He wants a navy. He comes " to take counsel of the dead," 
with whom he finds an " infallible criterion." But, alas ! 
" dead men tell no tales," and give no counsel. There was 
no witch at Portsmouth to bring up Washington quickly. 

His subsequent deference to the money-power begins to 
appear : " The Federal Constitution was adopted for no single 
reason so much as for the protection of commerce." " Com- 
merce has paid the price of independence." It has been 
committed to the care of the general government, but " not 
as a convict to the safe keeping of a jailor," " not for close 
confinement." He wants a navy to protect it. Such were 
the opinions of Federalists around him. 

* "An Anniversary Address, delivered before the Federal Gentlemen of 
Concord and its Vicinity, July 4, 1806. By Daniel Webster. Concord, 
N. H., 1806." 8vo. pp.21. 

t " An Address delivered before the Washington Benevolent Society nt 
Portsmouth, July 4, 1812. By Daniel Webster. Portsm. N.H." 8vo. pp.27. 
He delivered also other Fourth-of-July addresses, which I have not seen. 
5 



26 

But these speeches of his youth and early manhood were 
but commonplace productions. In his capacity as public 
orator, in the vigorous period of his faculties, he made three 
celebrated speeches, not at all political, — at Plymouth Rock, 
to celebrate the two hundredth anniversary of New Eng- 
land's birth ; at Bunker Hill, in memory of the chief battle of 
New England ; and at Faneuil Hall, to honor the two great 
men who died when the nation was fifty years old, and they 
fourscore. Each of these orations was a great and noble 
effort of patriotic eloquence. 

Standing on Plymouth Rock, with the graves of the fore- 
fathers around him, how proudly could he say, — 

" Our ancestors established their system of government on morality 
and religious sentiment. Moral habits, they believed, cannot safely be 
trusted on any other foundation than religious principle, nor any govern- 
ment be secure which is not supported by moral habits. Living under 
the heavenly light of revelation, they hoped to find all the social disposi- 
tions, all the duties which men owe to each other and to society, enforced 
and performed. Whatever makes men good Christians makes them good 
citizens. Our fathers came here to enjoy their religion free and unmo- 
lested ; and, at the end of two centuries, there is nothing upon which we 
can pronounce more confidently, nothing of which we can express a more 
deep and earnest conviction, than of the inestimable importance of that 
religion to man, both in regard to this life and that which is to come." 

At Bunker Hill, there were before him the men of the 
Revolution, — venerable men who drew swords at Lexing- 
ton and Concord, and faced the fight in many a fray. There 
was the French nobleman, — would to God that France had 
many such to-day ! — who perilled his fortune, life, and 
reputation, for freedom in America, and never sheathed the 
sword he drew at Yorktown till France also was a republic, 
— Fayette was there ; the Fayette of two revolutions ; the 
Fayette of Yorktown and Olmutz. How well could he 
say,— 

" Let our conceptions be enlarged to the circle of our duties. Let us 
extend our ideas over the whole of the vast field in which we are called to 



27 



act. Let our object be, our country, our whole country, and nothing 
but our country. And, by the blessing of God, may that country itself 
become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and terror, hut 
of wisdom, of peace, and of liberty, upon which the world may gazo with 
admiration for ever ! " 

On another occasion, when two great men, who, in the 
time that tried men's souls, were of the earliest to peril 
"their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor," — men 
who, having been one in the Declaration of Independence, 
were again made one in death, — then the people returned to 
the cradle wherein the elder Adams and Hancock had rocked 
Liberty when young ; and Webster chaunted the psalm 
of commemoration to the younger Adams and Jefferson, 
who had helped that new-born child to walk. He brought 
before the living the mighty dead ; in his words they fought 
their battles o'er again ; we heard them resolve, that, " sink 
or swim, live or die, survive or perish," they gave their hand 
and their heart for liberty; and Adams and Jefferson grew 
greater before the eyes of the people, as he brought them 
up, and showed the massive services of those men, and 
pointed out the huge structure of that human fabric which 
had gone to the grave : — 

" Adams and Jefferson, I have said, are no more. As human beings, 
indeed, they are no more. They are no more, as in 1776, bold and fear- 
less advocates of independence ; no more, as at subsequent periods, the 
head of the government; no more, as we have recently seen them, aged 
and venerable objects of admiration and regard. They are no more. They 
are dead. But how little is there of the great and good which can die ! 
To their country they yet live, and live for ever. They live in all that 
perpetuates the remembrance of men on earth ; in the recorded proofs of 
their own great actions, in the offspring of their intellect, in the deep- 
engraved lines of public gratitude, and in the respect and homage of man- 
kind. They live in their example ; and they live, emphatically, and will 
live, in the influence which their lives and efforts, tlieir principles and 
opinions, now exercise, and will continue to exercise, on the affairs of 
men, not only in their own country, but throughout the civilized world." 

How loftily did he say : — 



28 

" Tf wc cherish the virtues and the principles of nr.r fathers, Heaven 
will assist us to carry on the work of human liberty and human happiness. 
Auspicious omens cliccr us. Great examples are before us. Our own 
firmament now sliincs brightly upon our path. Washington is in the 
clear, upper sky. These other stars have now joined the American con- 
stellation. They circle round their centre, and the heavens beam with 
new light. Beneath this illumination let us walk the course of life, and, 
at its close, devoutly commend our beloved country, the common parent 
of us all, to the Divine Benignity." 



As a political officer, I shall speak of him as a legislator 
and executor of the law, a maker and administrator of 
laws. 

In November, 1812, Mr. Webster was chosen as Rep- 
resentative to the Thirteenth Congress. At that time the 
country was at war with Great Britain ; and the well-known 
restraints still fettered the commerce of the country. The 
people were divided into two great parties, — the Federalists, 
who opposed the embargo and the war ; and the Demo- 
crats, who favored both. Mr. Madison, then President, had 
been forced into the war, contrary :o his own convictions 
of expediency and of right. The most bitter hatred pre- 
vailed between the two parties: "party politics were inex- 
pressibly violent." An eminent lawyer of Salem, afterwards 
one of the most distinguished jurists in the world, a Demo- 
crat, was, on account of his political opinions, knocked down 
in the street, beaten, and forced to take shelter in the house 
of a friend, whither he fled, bleeding, and covered with the 
mud of the streets. Political rancor invaded private life ; 
it occupied the pulpit; it blinded men's eyes to a degree 
almost exceeding belief: were it not now a fact, we should 
not believe it possible at a former time. 

Mr. Webster Avas a Federalist, earnest and devoted, with 
the convictions of a Federalist, and the prejudices and the 
blindness of a Federalist; and, of course, hated by men 
who had the convictions of a Democrat, and the prejudices 



29 



and blindness thereof. It is difficult to understand the 
wilfulness of thorough partisans. In New Hai pshire the 
Judges were Democrats; the Federalists, having a majority 
in the Legislature, wished to be rid of them, and, for that 
purpose, abolished all the Courts in the State, and appointed 
others in their place (1813). I mention this only to show 
the temper of the times. 

There was no great principle of political morals on which 
the two parties differed, only on measures of expediency. 
The Federalists demanded freedom of the seas and pro- 
tection for commerce ; but they repeatedly, solemnly, and 
officially scorned to extend this protection to sailors. They 
justly complained of the embargo that kept their ships from 
the sea, but found little fault with the British for impress- 
ing sailors from American ships. The Democrats professed 
the greatest regard for " sailors' rights ; " but, in 1814, the 
government forbade its officers to grant protection to "colored 
sailors," though Massachusetts had more than a thousand 
able seamen of that class. Said a leading Federal organ, — 
" The Union is dear ; Commerce is still more dear." " The 
Eastern States agreed to the Union for the sake of their 
Commerce."* 

With the Federalists there was a great veneration for 
England. Said Mr. Fisher Ames, — "The immortal spirit 
of the wood-nymph Liberty dwells only in the British oak." 
" Our country," quoth he, " is too big for union, too sordid 
for patriotism, and too democratic for liberty." " England," 
said another, "is the bulwark of our religion," and the "shield 
of afflicted humanity." A Federalist newspaper at Boston 
censured Americans as "enemies of England and monar- 
chy," and accused the Democrats of " antipathy to kingly 
power." Did Democrats complain that our prisoners were 
ill-treated by the British, it was declared "foolish and wicked 
to throw the blame on the British government" ! Americans 
• "Columbian Centinel" for July 25, 1812. 



30 



expressed indignation at the British outrages at Hampton, — 
burning houses and violating the women. Said the Federal 
newspapers, it is " impossible that their (the British) military 
or naval men should be other than magnanimous and hu- 
mane." Mr. Clay accused the Federalists of " plots that 
aim at the dismemberment of the Union," and denounced the 
party as " conspirators against the integrity of the nation." 

In general, the Federalists maintained that England had 
a right to visit American vessels to search for and take her 
own subjects, if found there; and, if she sometimes took 
an American citizen, that was only an " incidental evil." 
Great Britain, said the Massachusetts Legislature, has done 
us "no essential injury:" she "was fighting the battles 
of the world." They denied that she had impressed " any 
considerable number of American seamen." Such was the 
language of Mr. Webster and the party he served. But even 
at that time the "Edinburgh Review" declared, "Every 
American seaman might be said to hold his liberty, and ulti- 
mately his life, at the discretion of a foreign commander. 
In many cases, accordingly, native-born Americans were 
dragged on board British ships of war : they were dispersed 
in the remotest quarters of the globe, and not only exposed 
to the perils of service, but shut out by their situation from 
all hope of ever being reclaimed. The right of reclaiming 
runaway seamen was exercised, in short, without either 
moderation or justice." 

Over six thousand cases of impressment were recorded in 
the American Department of State. In Parliament, Lord 
Castlereagh admitted that there were three thousand five 
hundred men in the British fleet claiming to be American 
citizens, and sixteen hundred of them actually citizens. 
At the beginning of the war, two thousand five hundred 
American citizens, impressed into the British navy, refused to 
fight against their native land, and were shut up in Dart- 
moor prison. When the Guerriere was captured, there were 



31 



ten American sailors on board who refused to fight. In 
Parliament, in 1808, Mr. Baring (Lord Ashburton) defended 
the rights of Americans against the British orders in coun- 
cil, while in 1812—13 the Federalists could not find out 
the cases of impressment, — such was the influence of party 
spirit. 

The party out of power is commonly the friend of free- 
dom. The Supreme Court of Massachusetts declared that 
unconstitutional acts of Congress were void ; the Legislature 
declared it the duty of the State Courts to prevent usurped 
and unconstitutional powers from being exercised : " It is 
the duty of the present generation to stand between the 
next and despotism." " Whenever the national compact is 
violated, and the citizens of this State oppressed by cruel and 
unauthorized enactments, this Legislature is bound to inter- 
pose its power to wrest from the oppressor his victim." 

After the Federal party had taken strong ground, Mr. 
Webster opposed the administration, opposed the war, took 
the part of England in the matter of impressment. He 
drew up the Brentwood Memorial, once so famous all over 
New England, now forgotten and faded out of all men's 
memory.* 

On the 24th of May, 1813, Mr. Webster first took his 
seat in the House of Representatives, at the extra session of 
the thirteenth Congress. He was a member of the Com- 
mittee on Foreign Affairs, and industriously opposed the 
administration. In the three sessions of this Congress, he 
closely followed the leaders of the Federal party ; voting 
with Mr. Pickering a hundred and ninety-one times, and 
against him only four times, in the two years. Sometimes 
he "avoided the question;" but voted against thanking 
Commodore Perry for his naval conduct, against the pur- 
chase of Mr. Jefferson's library, against naval supplies, direct 
taxes, and internal duties. 

* I purposely pass over other political writings and speeches of his. 



32 

He opposed the government scheme of a National Bank.* 
No adequate reports of his speeches against the warf are 
preserved; but, to judge from the testimony of an eminent 
man, they contained prophetic indications of that oratorical 
power which was one day so mightily to thunder and lighten 
in the nation's eyes. Yet his influence in Congress does not 
appear to have been great. In later years he defended the 
United States Bank ; but that question, like others, had then 
become a party question ; and a horse in the party-team 
must go on with his fellows, or be flayed by the driver's 

lash. 

But though his labors were not followed by any very 
marked influence at Washington, at home he drew on him- 
self the wrath of the Democratic party. Mr. Isaac Hill, the 
editor of the leading Democratic paper in New Hampshire, 
pursued him with intense personal hatred. He sneeringly 
says, and falsely, " The great Mr. Webster, so extremely 
flippant in arguing petty suits in the courts of law, cuts but 
a sorry figure at Washington : his overweening confidence 
and zeal cannot there supply the place of knowledge.":): 

He was sneeringly called the "great," the "eloquent," the 
" pre-eminent" Daniel Webster. His deeds, his words, his 
silence, all were represented as coming from the basest mo- 
tives, and serving the meanest ends. His journal at Ports- 
mouth was called the " lying oracle." Listen to this : " Mr. 
Webster spoke much and often when he was in Congress ; 
and, if he had studied the Wisdom of Solomon (as some of 
his colleagues probably did), he would have discovered that 
a fool is known by his much speaking." 

Mr. Webster, in common with his party, refused to take 
part in the war. " I honor," said he, " the people that 

• Speech in the House of Representatives, Jan. 2, 1815. Works, vol. iii. 

p. 35, et seq. 

t See his Speech in House of Representatives, Jan. 14, 1814, on the Army 
Bill. Alexandria, 1814. 8vo. pp. 14. 

% " New Hampshire Patriot" of July 27, 1813. 



33 



shrink from such a contest as this. I applaud their senti- 
ments : they are such as religion and humanity dictate, and 
such as none but cannibals would wish to eradicate from the 
human heart." Whereupon the editor asks, Will not the 
federal soldiers call the man who made the speech " a cold- 
blooded wretch, whose heart is callous to every patriotic 
feeling ? " * and then, " We do not wonder at Mr. Webster's 
reluctance again to appear at the city of Washington " (he 
was attending cases at court) : " even his native brass must 
be abashed at his own conduct, at his own speeches." f 
Flattery " has spoiled him ; for application might have made 
him something a dozen years hence. It has given him 
confidence, a face of brass, which and his native volubility 
are mistaken for ' pre-eminent talent.' Of all men in the 
State, he is the fittest to be the tool of the enemy." ^ He 
was one of the men that bring the " nation to the verge of 
ruin;" a " Thompsonian intriguer;" a " Macfarland ad- 
mirer." " The self-importance and gross egotism he displays 
are disgusting." " You would suppose him a great mer- 
chant, living in a maritime city, and not a man reared in 
the woods of Salisbury, or educated in the wilds of Hano- 
ver." § 

Before he was elected to Congress, Mr. Hill accused him 
of " deliberate falsehood," of "telling bold untruths to justify 
the enormities of the enemy." \\ The cry was raised, "The 
Union is in danger." Mr. Webster was to bring about " a 
dissolution of the Union." ^[ " The few conspirators in Bos- 
ton, who aim at the division of the Union, and the English 
Government, who support them in their rebellion, appear to 
play into each other's hands with remarkable adroitness." 
The Patriot speaks of "the mad measures of the Boston 
junto; the hateful, hypocritical scheme of its canting, disaf- 

* "New Hampshire Patriot," Aug. 27, 1814. 
t Id., Oct. 4, 1814. % Id., Aug. 2, 1814. § Id., Aug. 9, 1814. 

[] Id., Oct. 29, 1812. f Id., Oct. 13, 1812. 

6 



34 

fected chief, and the audacious tone of its public prints." * 
The language of Washington was quoted against political 
foes; his Farewell Address reprinted. Mr. Webster was 
charged with " setting the North against the South." The 
Essex junto was accused of " a plot to destroy the Union," 
in order " to be under the glorious shelter of British protec- 
tion." f The Federalists were a "British faction;" the 
country members of the Massachusetts Legislature were 
" wooden members ; " distinguished characters were " ex- 
citing hostility against the Union ; " one of these " ought to 
be tied to the tail of a Congreve rocket, and offered up a 
burnt sacrifice." It was " moral treason" not to rejoice at 
the victories of the nation — it was not then " levying war." 
The Legislature of New Jersey called the acts of the Massa- 
chusetts Legislature " the ravings of an infuriated faction," 
and Gov. Strong a "Maniac Governor." The "Boston 
Patriot "$ called Mr. Webster "the poor fallen Webster," 
who " curses heartily his setters on : " " the poor creature 
is confoundedly mortified." Mr. Clay, in Congress, could 
speak of "the howlings of the whole British pack, let loose 
from the Essex junto : " the Federalists were attempting 
" to familiarize the public mind with the horrid scheme of 
disunion." § And Isaac Hill charges the Federalists with 
continually "threatening a separation of the States; striving 
to stir up the passions of the. North against the South, — in 
clear defiance of the dying injunctions of Washington." || I 
mention these things that all may understand the temper 
of those times. 

In 1814, Mr. Webster sought for the office of Attorney 
General of New Hampshire, but, failing thereof, was re- 
elected to the House of Representatives. In the fourteenth 

* March 30, 1813, quoted from the "Baltimore Patriot." 

t "Boston Patriot," No. 1. 

% July 21, 1813. 

§ Speech in House of Representatives, Jan. 8, 1813. 

|| " New Hampshire Patriot" for June 7, 1814. 



35 



Congress, two important measures came up amongst others, 
— the Bank and the Tariff. Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Clay fa- 
vored the establishment of a national bank, with a capital of 
$35,000,000. Mr. Webster opposed it by votes and speech, 
reaffirming the sound doctrines of his former speech : the 
founders of the Constitution were " hard-money men ; " 
government must not receive the paper of banks which do 
not pay specie ; but " the taxes must be paid in the legal 
money of the country." * Such was the doctrine of the 
leading Federalists of the time, and the practice of New 
England. He introduced a resolution, that all revenues of 
the United States should be paid in the legal currency of the 
nation. It met scarce any opposition, and was passed 
the same day. I think this was the greatest service he ever 
performed in relation to our national currency or national 
finance. He was himself proud of it in his later years.f 

The protective tariff was supported by Messrs. Calhoun, 
Clay, and Lowndes. Mr. Webster opposed it ; for the 
capitalists of the North, then deeply engaged in commerce, 
looked on it as hostile to their shipping, and talked of the 
" dangers of manufactories." Was it for this reason that the 
South, always jealous of the Northern thrifty toil, proposed 
it ? So it was alleged. J Mr. Webster declared that Con- 
gress has no constitutional right to levy duties for protection ; 
only for revenue. Revenue is the constitutional substance ; 
protection, only the accidental shadow. § 



In 1816, Mr. Webster removed to Boston. In 1819, 
while he was a private citizen, a most important question 
came before the nation, — Shall slavery be extended into the 
Missouri Territory ? Here, too, Mr. Webster was on the 

* Speech in House of Representatives, Feb. 28, 1816 (in " National Intel- 
ligencer for March 2, 1816). See also "Works, vol. ill. p. 35, et seq. 
t It passed April 26, 1816. Yeas, 79 ; nays, 35. 

X But see Mr. Calhoun's defence of his course, Life and Speeches, p. 329. 
§ Speech in House of Representatives. 



36 



side of freedom. He was one of a committee appointed by 
a meeting of the citizens of Boston to call a general meeting 
of the citizens to oppose the extension of slavery. The 
United States Marshal was chairman of the meeting. Mr. 
Webster was one of the committee to report resolutions at a 
subsequent meeting. Said the preamble : — 

" The extirpation of slavery has never ceased to be a measure deeply 
concerning the honor and safety of the United States." "In whatever 
tends to diminish the evil of slavery, or to check its growth, all parts of the 
confederacy are alike interested." " If slavery is established in Missouri, 
then it will be burthened with all the mischiefs which are too well known 
to be the sure results of slavery; an evil, which has long been deplored, 
would be incalculably augmented ; the whole confederacy would be 
weakened, and our free institutions disgraced, by the voluntary extension 
of a practice repugnant to all the principles of a free government, the con- 
tinuance of which in any part of our country necessity alone has justified." 

It was Resolved, that Congress "possesses the constitutional power, 
upon the admission of any new State created beyond the limits of the 
original territory of the United States, to make the prohibition of the fur- 
ther extension of slavery or involuntary servitude in such new State, a 
condition of its admission." " It is just and expedient that this power 
should be exercised by Congress, upon the admission of all new States 
created beyond the limits of the original territory of the United States." 

In a speech, Mr. Webster " showed incontrovertibly that 
Congress had this power ; that they were called upon by 
all the principles of sound policy, humanity, and morality, 
to enact it, and, by prohibiting slavery in the new State of 
Missouri, oppose a barrier to the further progress of slavery, 
which else — and this was the last time the opportunity 
would happen to fix its limits — would roll on desolating 
the vast expanse of continent to the Pacific Ocean." * 

Mr. Webster was appointed chairman of a committee to 
prepare a memorial to Congress on this matter.f Said he : 

* Account of a Meeting at the State House in Boston, Dec. 3, 1819, to 
consider the Extension of Slavery by the United States (in " Boston Daily 
Advertiser" for Dec. 4, 1819). 

t " A Memorial to the Congress of the United States, on the Subject 
of Restraining the Increase of Slavery in the New States to be admitted into 
the Union," &c. &c. Boston, 1819. pp. 22. 



37 



" We have a strong feeling of the injustice of any toleration of slavery." 
But, " to permit it in a new country, what is it but to encourage that 
rapacity, and fraud, and violence, against which we have so long pointed 
the denunciations of our penal code 1 What is it hut to tarnish the proud 
fame of our country? What is it but to throw suspicion on its good faith, 
and to render questionable all its professions of regard for the rights of 
humanity and the liberties of mankind? " — p. 21. 

At that time, such was the general opinion of the Northern 
men.* Said a writer in the leading journal of Boston : 
"Other calamities are trifles compared to this (slavery). 
"War has alleviations ; if it does much evil, it does some 
good : at least, it has an end. But negro-slavery is misery 
without mixture ; it is Pandora's box, but no Hope at the 
bottom ; it is evil, and only evil, and that continually." f 

A meeting of the most respectable citizens of Worcester 
resolved against " any further extension of slavery," as 
" rendering our boasted Land of Liberty pre-eminent only 
as a mart for Human Flesh." 

" Sad prospects," said the " Boston Daily Advertiser," 
" indeed for emancipators and colonizers, that, faster than 
the wit or the means of men can devise a method even for 
keeping stationary the frightful propagation of slavery, other 
men, members of the same community, sometimes col- 
leagues of the same deliberative assembly, will be compass- 
ing, with all their force, the widest possible extension of 
slavery." $ 

The South uttered its threat of " dissolving the Union," 
if slavery were not extended Avest of the Mississippi. " The 



* See a valuable series of papers in the " Boston Daily Advertiser," No. I. 
to VI., on this subject, from Nov. 20 to Dec. 28, 1819. Charge of Judge Story 
to the Grand Juries, &c. ; ibid. Dec. 7 and 8, 1819. Article on the Missouri 
Compromise, in " North American Review," Jan. 1820. Mr. King's speech 
in Senate of United States, in " Columbian Centinel " for Jan. 19 and 22, 
1820. See also the comments of the "Daily Advertiser" on the treachery 
of Mr. Mason, the Boston representative, March 28 and 29, 1820. 

t "L. M." in " Columbian Centinel" for Dec. 8, 1819. 

X "Boston Daily Advertiser" for Nov. 20, 1819. 



38 



threat," said a writer, " when we consider from whence it 
comes, raises at once wonder and pity, but has never been 
thought worth a serious answer here. Even the academi- 
cians of Laputa never imagined such a nation as these 
seceding States would form." " We have lost much ; our 
national honor has received a stain in the eyes of the world ; 
we have enlarged the sphere of human misery and crime."* 
Only four New Englanders voted for the Missouri Compro- 
mise, — Hill and Holmes of Maine, Mason and Shaw of 
Massachusetts. 

Mr. Webster held no public office in this State, until he 
was chosen a member of the Convention for amending the 
Constitution of the Commonwealth. 

It appears that he had a large influence in the Massachu- 
setts Convention. His speeches, however, do not show any 
remarkable depth of philosophy, or width of historic view ; 
but they show the strength of a great mind not fully master 
of his theme. They are not always fair ; they sometimes 
show the specious arguments of the advocate, and do not 
always indicate the soundness of the judge. He developed 
no new ideas; looked back more than forward. He stated 
his opinions with clearness and energy. His leaning was 
then, as it always was, towards the concentration of power ; 
not to its diffusion. It was the Federal leaning of New 
England at the time. He had no philosophical objection to 
a technical religious test as the qualification for office, but 
did not think it expedient to found a measure on that prin- 
ciple. He wanted property, and not population, as the 
basis of representation in the Senate. It was " the true 
basis and measure of power." " Political power," said he, 
" naturally and necessarily goes into the hands which hold 
the property." The House might rest on men, the Senate 
on money. Said he, " It would seem to be the part of 
political wisdom to found government on property ; " yet 

* "Boston Daily Advertiser" of March 16, 1820. 



39 



he wished to have the property diffused as widely as pos- 
sible. He was not singular in this preference of money to 
men. Others thought, that, to put the Senate on the basis 
of population, and not property, was a change of " an 
alarming character." 

He had small confidence in the people ; apparently little 
sympathy with the multitude of men. He was jealous of 
the Legislature; afraid of its encroachment on the Judi- 
ciary, — New Hampshire had shown him examples of legis- 
lative injustice, — but contended ably for the independence 
of Judges. He had great veneration for the existing Con- 
stitution, and thought there would "never be any occasion 
for great changes" in it, and that " no revision of its general 
principles would be necessary." Others of the same party 
thought also that the Constitution was "the most perfect 
system that human wisdom had ever devised." To judge 
from the record, Mr. Webster found abler heads than his 
own in that Convention. Indeed it would have been surpri- 
sing if a young man, only eight and thirty years of age, 
should surpass the "assembled wisdom of the State."* 

On the 2d of December, 1823, Mr. Webster took his seat 
in the House of Representatives, as member for Boston. 
He defended the cause of the Greeks " with the power of a 
great mind applied to a great subject," denounced the " Holy 
Alliance," and recommended interference to prevent oppres- 
sion. Public opinion set strongly in that direction.! " The 

* Some valuable passages of Mr. Webster's speeches are omitted from the 
edition of his Works. (Compare vol. iii. pp. 15 and \3, with the " Journal 
of Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of Delegates," &c. Boston, 
1821. pp. 143, 144, and 145, 146.) A reason for the omission will be 
obvious to any one who reads the original, and remembers the position and 
expectations of the author in 1851. 

t Meetings had been held in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and other 
important towns, and considerable sums of money raised on behalf of the 
Greeks. Even the educated men were filled with enthusiasm for the de- 
scendants of Anacreon and Pericles. The leading journals of England were 
on the same side. See the letters of John Q. Adams to Mr. Rich and 



40 



policy of our Government," said he, " is on the side of 
liberal and enlightened sentiments." " The civilized -world 
has done with ' the erroneous faith of many made for 
one.' " * 

In 1816 he had opposed a tariff which levied a heavy duty 
on imports; in 1824 he opposed it again, with vigorous 
arguments. His speech at that time is a work of large 
labor, of some nice research, and still of value. f "Like a 
mighty giant," says Mr. Hayne, " he bore away upon his 
shoulders the pillars of the temple of error and delusion, 
escaping himself unhurt, and leaving his adversaries over- 
whelmed in its ruins." He thought, "the authority of Con- 
gress to exercise the revenue-power with direct reference to 
the protection of manufactures is a questionable authority." $ 
He represented the opinion of New England, which "dis- 
countenanced the progress of this policy " of high duties. 
The Federalists of the North inclined to free trade ; in 1807 
Mr. Dexter thought it " an unalienable right," § and in 1820 
Judge Story asked, why should "the laboring classes be 
taxed for the necessaries of life ? " || The tariff of 1824 got 
but one vote from Massachusetts. As the public opinion 
of Northern capitalists changed, it brought over the opi- 
nion of Mr. Webster, who seems to have had no serious 
and sober convictions on this subject. At one time the pro- 
tective system is ruinous to the laboring man, but again 
" it is aimed point-blank at the protection of labor ; " and 
the duty on coal must not be diminished, lest coal grow 

Mr. Luriottis, Dec. 1£, 1823 ; and of John Adams, Dec. 29, 1823. Mr. Clay 
■was on the same side with Mr. Webster. But Mr. Randolph, in his speech 
in House of Representatives, Jan. 20, 1824, tartly asked, "Why have we 
never sent an envoy to our sister republic Hayti ? " 

* See the just and beautiful remarks of Mr. Webster in this speech. 
Works, vol. iii. pp. 77, 78, and 92 and 93. Oh si sic semper! 

t Vol. iii. p. 94, et seq. See Speech in Faneuil Hall, Oct. 2, 1820. 

% Speech in reply to Hayne, vol. iii. p. 305. 

§ Argument in District Court of Massachusetts against the Embargo. 

j) Memorial of the Citizens of Salem. 



41 

scarce and dear.* Non-importation was "an American 
instinct." f 

In 1828 he voted for " the bill of abominations," as that 
tariff was called, which levied " thirty-two millions of duties 
on sixty-four millions of imports," " not because he was in 
favor of the measure, but as the least of two evils." 

In 1816 the South wanted a protective tariff: the com- 
mercial North hated it. It was Mr. CalhounJ who introduced 
the measure first. Mr. Clay gave it the support of his large 
talents and immense personal influence, and built up the 
" American System." Pennsylvania and New York were on 
that side. Gen. Jackson voted for the tariff of 1824. Mr. 
Clay was jealous of foreign commerce: it was "the great 
source of foreign wars." " The predilection of the school 
of the Essex junto," said he, " for foreign trade and British 
fabrics is unconquerable." Yet he correctly said, " New 
England will have the first and richest fruits of the tariff." § 
After the system of protection got footing, the Northern 
capitalists set about manufacturing in good earnest, and then 
Mr. Webster became the advocate of a high tariff of protec- 
tive duties. Here he has been blamed for his change of 
opinion ; but to him it was an easy change. He was not a 
scientific legislator: he had no great and comprehensive 
ideas of that part of legislation which belongs to political 
economy. He looked only at the fleeting interest of his 
constituents, and took their transient opinions of the hour 
for his norm of conduct. As these altered, his own views 
also changed. Sometimes the change was a revolution. || It 

* Works, vol. iv. p. 309. f Works, vol. ii. p. 352. 

% See Mr. Calhoun's reason for this. Life and Speeches, p. 70, et seq. 

§ Speech in House of Rep., April 26, 1820. Works, vol. i. p. 150. 

|| Compare his speeches on the tariff in 1824 and 1828 (Works, vol. iii. 
p. 94, et seq. ; and 228, et seq.) with his subsequent speeches thereon in 1837, 
1846. Works, vol. iv. p. 304, et seq. ; vol. v. p. 361, et seq. ; and vol. ii. p. 130, 
et seq. and 349, et seq. Compare vol. iii. p. 118, et seq. and 121, et seq. with 
vol. ii. p. 357. See his reasons for the change of opinion in vol. v. p. 18G and 
240. All of these speeches are marked by great ability of statement. 
7 



42 



seems to me his first opinion was right, and his last a fatal 
mistake, that he never answered his first great speech of 
1824 : but it seems to me that he was honest in the change ; 
for he only looked at the pecuniary interest of his employers, 
and took their opinions for his guide. But he had other 
fluctuations on this matter of the tariff, which do not seem 
capable of so honorable an explanation.* 

\/ In the days of nullification, Mr. Webster denied the right 
of South Carolina to secede from the Union, or to give a 
final interpretation of the Constitution. She maintained that 
the Federal Government had violated the Constitution ; that 
she, the aggrieved State of South Carolina, was the judge in 
that matter, and had a constitutional right to " nullify " the 
Constitution, and withdraw from the Union. 

The question is a deep one. It is the old question of 
Federal and Democrat, — the question between the constitu- 
tional power of the whole, and the power of the parts, — 
Federal power and State power. Mr. Webster was always 
in favor of a strong central government ; honestly in favor of 
it, I doubt not. His speeches on that subject were most mas- 
terly speeches. I refer, in particular, to that in 1830 against 
Mr. Hayne, and the speech in 1833 against Mr. Calhoun. 

The first of these is the great political speech of Daniel 
Webster. I do not mean to say that it is just in its political 
ethics, or deep in the metaphysics of politics, or far-sighted 
in its political providence. I only mean to say that it sur- 
passes all his other speeches in the massive intellectual power 
of statement. Mr. Webster was then eight and forty years 
old. He defended New England against Mr. Hayne ; he 
defended the Constitution of the United States against South 
Carolina. His speech is full of splendid eloquence ; he 

* Compare his speech in Faneuil Hall, Sept. 30, 1842, with his tariff 
speeches in 1846. Works, vol. ii. p. 130, et seq. with vol. v. p. 161, et seq. and 
vol. ii. p. 349, et seq. 



43 



reached high, and put the capstone upon his fame, whose 
triple foundation he had laid at Plymouth, at Bunker Hill, 
and at Faneuil Hall. The "republican members of the 
Massachusetts Legislature" unanimously thanked him for 
his able vindication of their State. A Virginian, who heard 
the speech, declared he felt " as if looking at a mammoth 
treading his native canebrake, and, without apparent con- 
sciousness, crushing obstacles which nature had never 
designed as impediments to him." 

He loved concentrated power, and seems to have thought 
the American Government was exclusively national, and not 
Federal.* The Constitution was "not a compact." He 
was seldom averse to sacrificing the claims of the individual 
States to the claim of the central authority. He favored 
consolidation of power, while the South Carolinians and 
others favored local self-government. It was no doctrine of 
his " that unconstitutional laws bind the people ;" but it was 
his doctrine that such laws bind the people until the Supreme 
Court declared them unconstitutional ; thus making, not the 
Constitution, but the discretion of the rulers, the measure of 
its powers. 

It is customary at the North to think Mr. Webster wholly 
in the right, and South Carolina wholly in the wrong, on that 
question ; but it should be remembered, that some of the 
ablest men whom the South ever sent to Washington thought 
otherwise. There was a good deal of truth in the speech of 
Mr. Hayne : he was alarmed at the increase of the central 
power, which seemed to invade the rights of the States. Mr. 
Calhoun defended the Carolinian idea ; f and Calhoun was a 
man of great mind, a sagacious man, a man of unimpeach- 

* Last remarks on Foote's Resolution, and speech in Senate, 13th Feb. 
1833. Works, vol. iii. p. 343, et seq. ; 448, et seq. 

t See Mr. Calhoun's Disquisition on Government, and his Discourse 
on the Constitution and Government of the United States, in his Works, 
vol. i. (Charleston, 1851); Life and Speeches (New York, 1843), No. iii. — 
vi. See, too, Life and Speeches, No. ix. xix. xxii. 



44 



able integrity in private. Mr. Clay was certainly a man 
of very large intellect, wise and subtle and far-sighted. 
But, in 1833, he introduced his "Compromise Measure," 
to avoid the necessity of enforcing the opinions of Mr. 
Webster. 

I must pass over many things in Mr. Webster's congres- 
sional career. 

While Secretary of State, he performed the great act of 
his public life, — the one deed on which his reputation as a 
political administrator seems to settle down and rest. He 
negotiated the Treaty of Washington in 1842. The matter 
was difficult, the claims intricate. There were four parties 
to pacify, — England, the United States, Massachusetts, and 
Maine. The difficulty was almost sixty years old. Many 
political doctors had laid their hands on the immedicable 
wound, which only smarted sorer under their touch. The 
British Government sent over a minister to negotiate a treaty 
with the American Secretary. The two eminent statesmen 
settled the difficulty. It has been said that no other man in 
America could have done so well, and drawn the thunder out 
of the gathered cloud. Perhaps I am no judge of that; 
yet I do not see why any sensible and honest man could 
not have done the work. You all remember the anxiety 
of America and of England ; the apprehension of war ; and 
the delight when these two countries shook hands, as the 
work was done. Then we all felt that there was only 
one English nation, — the English Briton and the English 
American; that Webster and Ashburton were fellow-citi- 
zens, yea, were brothers of the same great Anglo-Saxon 
tribe. 

His letters on the Right of Search, and the British claim to 
impress seamen from American ships, would have done honor 
to any statesman in the world.* He refused to England 

* Works, vol. vi. p. 318, et seq. 



45 



the right to visit and search our ships, on the plea of their 
being engaged in the slave-trade. Some of my anti-slavery 
brethren have censured him for this. I always thought he 
was right in the matter. But, on the other side, his cele- 
brated letter to Lord Ashburton, in the Creole case, seems to 
me most eminently unjust, false in law, and wicked in mo- 
rality.* It is the greatest stain on that negotiation ; and it is 
wonderful to me, that, in 1846, Mr. Webster could himself 
declare that he thought that letter was the most triumphant 
production from his pen in all the correspondence. 

But let us pause a moment, and see how much praise is 
really due to Mr. Webster for negotiating the treaty. I 
limit my remarks to the north-eastern boundary. The main 
question was, Where is the north-west angle of Nova Scotia, 
mentioned in the treaty of 1783 ? for a line, drawn due north 
from the source of the river St. Croix to the summit of the 
highlands dividing the waters of the Atlantic from those of the 
St. Lawrence, was to terminate at that point. The Ameri- 
can claim was most abundantly substantiated ; but it left the 
British Provinces, New Brunswick and Canada, in an em- 
barrassed position. No military road could be maintained 
between them ; and, besides, the American border came very 
near to Quebec. Accordingly, the British Government, on 
the flimsiest pretext, refused to draw the lines and erect the 
monuments contemplated by the treaty of 1794 ; perverted 
the language of the treaty of 1783, which was too plain to 
be misunderstood ; and gradually extended its claim further 
and further to the west. By the treaty of Ghent (1814), it 
was provided that certain questions should be left out to a 
friendly power for arbitration. In 1827, this matter was 
referred to the King of the Netherlands : he was to deter- 
mine where the line of the treaty ran. He did not determine 
that question, but, in 1831, proposed a new conventional 
line. His award ceded to the British about 4,119 square 

* Works, vol. vi. p. 303, et seq. 



46 

miles of land in Maine. The English assented to it ; but the 
Americans refused to accept the award, Mr. Webster op- 
posing it. He was entirely convinced that the American 
claim was just and sound, and the American interpretation 
of the treaty of 17S3 the only correct one. On a memora- 
ble occasion, in the Senate of the United States, Mr. Web- 
ster declared — "that Great Britain ought forthwith to be 
told, that, unless she would agree to settle the question by the 
4th of July next, according to the treaty of 1783, we would 
then take possession of that line, and let her drive us off if 

she can ! " * 

The day before, and in all soberness, he declared that he 
" never entertained a doubt that the right to this disputed 
territory was in the United States." This was " perfectly 
clear, — so clear that the controversy never seemed to him 
hardly to reach to the dignity of a debatable question." 

But, in 1842, the British minister came to negotiate a 
treaty. Maine and Massachusetts were asked to appoint 
commissioners to help in the matter ; for it seemed deter- 
mined on that those States were to relinquish some territory 
to which they had a lawful claim. Those States could not 
convey the territory to England, but might authorize the 
Federal Government to make the transfer. The treaty was 
made, and accepted by Maine and Massachusetts. But it 
ceded to Great Britain all the land which the award had 
given, and 893 square miles in addition. Thus the treaty 
conveyed to Great Britain more than five thousand square 
miles (upwards of 3,000,000 acres) of American territory, 
to which, by the terms of the treaty, the American title was 
perfectly good. Rouse's Point was ceded to the United 
States, with a narrow strip of land on the north of Vermont 
and New Hampshire; but the king's award gave us Rouse's 
Point at less cost. The rights which the Americans gained 

* Evening Debate of Senate, Feb. 27, 1839 (in " Boston Atlas " of 
March 1). 



47 



with the navigation of a part of the St. John's River were 
only a fair exchange for the similar right conceded to the 
British. As a compensation to Maine and Massachusetts 
for the loss of the land and the jurisdiction over it, the United 
States paid these two States $300,000, and indemnified 
Maine for the expenses occasioned by the troubles which had 
grown out of the contested claims, — about $ 300,000 more. 
Great Britain gained all that was essential to the welfare of 
her colonies. All her communications, civil and military, 
were for ever placed beyond hostile reach ; and all the mili- 
tary positions claimed by America, with the exception of 
Rouse's Point, were for ever secured to Great Britain. What 
did England concede ? It was fortunate that the contro- 
versy was settled; it was wise in America to be liberal. A 
tract of wild land, though half as large as Massachusetts, is 
nothing compared to a war. It is as well for mankind that 
the jurisdiction over that spot belongs to the Lion of England 
as to the Eagle of America. But I fear a man who makes 
such a bargain is not entitled to any great glory among 
diplomatists. In 1832, Maine refused to accept the award 
of the king, even when the Federal Government offered her 
a million acres of good land in Michigan, of her own selec- 
tion, valued at a million and a quarter of dollars. Had it 
been a question of the south-western boundary, and not 
the north-eastern, Mexico would have had an answer to 
her claim very different from that which England received. 
Mr. "Webster was determined on negotiating the treaty at all 
hazards, and was not very courteous to those who expostu- 
lated and stood out for the just rights of Maine and Massa- 
chusetts ; * nay, he was indignant at the presumption of 



* For the facts of this controversy, see, I. The Definitive Treaty of Peace, 
&c. 1783. Public Statutes of the United States of America (Boston, 1846), 
vol. viii. p. 80. Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Navigation, &c. 1794. 
ibid. p. 116. Treaty of Peace and Amity, 1814, ibid. p. 218. — II. Act of 
Twentieth Congress, stat. i. chap. xxx. id. vol. iv. p. 262. Act of Twenty-sixth 



48 



these States asking for compensation when their land was 
ceded away ! Was there any real danger of a war ? If 
England had claimed clear down to the Connecticut, I 
think the Southern masters of the North would have given 
up Bunker Hill and Plymouth Rock, rather than risk to the 
chances of a British war the twelve hundred million dollars 
invested in slaves. Men who live in straw houses think 
twice before they scatter fire-brands abroad. England 
knew well with whom she had to deal, and authorized her 
representative to treat only for a " conventional line," not to 
accept the line of the treaty ! Mr. Webster succeeded in 
negotiating, because he gave up more American territory 
than any one would yield before, — more than the king of 
the Netherlands had proposed. Still, we may all rejoice in 
the settlement of the question; and if Great Britain had 
admitted our claim by the plain terms of the treaty, and 
then asked for the land so valuable and necessary to her, 
who in New England would have found fault ? 

After the conclusion of the treaty, Mr. Webster came to 
Boston. You remember his speech in 1842, in Faneuil 
Hall. He was then sixty years old. He had done the great 
deed of his life. He still held a high station. He scorned, 
or affected to scorn, the littleness -of party and its narrow 
platform, and claimed to represent the people of the United 

Congress, stat. i. chap, lii, ibid. vol. v. p. 402; and stat. ii. chap. ii. p. 413. 
III. Statement, on the part of the United States, of the Case referred in 
pursuance of the Convention of 29th Sept. 1827, between the said States 
and Great Britain, to his Majesty the King of the Netherlands, for his 
decision thereon (Washington, 1829). North American Boundary, A. : 
Correspondence relating to the Boundary, &c. &c. (London, 1838). North 
American Boundary, part I. : Correspondence relating to the Boundary, &c. 
(London, 1840). The Bight of the United States of America to the North- 
Eastern Boundary claimed by them, &c. &c, by Albert Gallatin, &c. (New 
York, 1840). Documents of the Senate of Massachusetts, 1839, No. 15 ; 
1841, No. 9. Documents of the House of Representatives of the Common- 
wealth of Massachusetts, 1842, No. 44. — IV. Congressional Globe, &c. 
(Washington, 1843), vol. xii. and Appendix. Mr. Webster's Defence of the 
Treaty ; Works, vol. v. p. 18, et seq. 



49 



States. Everybody knew the importance of his speech. I 
counted sixteen reporters of the New England and Northern 
press at that meeting. It was a proud day for him, and 
also a stormy day. Other than friends were about him. It 
was thought that he had just scattered the thunder which 
impended over the nation : a sullen cloud still hung over 
his own expectations of the Presidency. He thundered his 
eloquence into that cloud, — the great ground-lightning of 
his Olympian power. 

I come now to speak of his relation to slavery. Up to 
1850, with occasional fluctuations, much of his conduct had 
been just and honorable. As a private citizen, in 1819, he 
opposed the Missouri Compromise. Said he, at the meeting 
of the citizens of Boston to prevent that iniquity, " We are 
acting for unborn millions, who lie along before us in the 
track of time." * The extension of slavery would de- 
moralize the people, and endanger the welfare of the nation. 
" Nor can the laws derive support from the manners of the 
people, if the power of moral sentiment be weakened by 
enjoying, under the permission of the government, great 
facilities to commit offences." f 

A few months after the deed was done, on Forefathers' 
Day in 1820, standing on Plymouth Rock, he could say : — 

" I deem it my duty, on this occasion, to suggest, that the land is not 
yet wholly free from the contamination of a traffic, at which every feeling 
of humanity must for ever revolt, — I mean the African slave-trade. 
Neither public sentiment nor the law has hitherto been able entirely to 
put an end to this odious and abominable trade. At the moment when 
God in his mercy has blessed the Christian world with a universal peace, 
there is reason to fear, that, to the disgrace of the Christian name and 
character, new efforts are making for the extension of this trade by 
subjects and citizens of Christian states, in whose hearts there dwell no 
sentiments of humanity or of justice, and over whom neither the fear of 



* Reported in the " Columbian Centinel " for Dec. 8, 1819. 
t Memorial to Congress, ut supra. 
8 



50 



God nor the fear of man exercises a control. In the sight of our law, 
the African slave-trader is a pirate and a felon ; and, in the sight of 
Heaven, an offender far beyond the ordinary depth of human guilt. There 
is no brighter page of our history than that which records the measures 
which have been adopted by the government at an early day, and at 
different times since, for the suppression of this traffic ; and I would call 
on all the true sons of New England to cooperate with the laws of man 
and the justice of Heaven. If there be, within the extent of our know- 
ledge or influence, any participation in this traffic, let us pledge ourselves 
here, upon the rock of Plymouth, to extirpate and destroy it. It is not 
fit that the land of the Pilgrims should bear the shame longer. I hear 
the sound of the hammer ; I see the 6moke of the furnaces where mana- 
cles and fetters are still forged for human limbs. I see the visages of 
those who, by stealth and at midnight, labor in this work of hell, foul 
and dark, as may become the artificers of such instruments of misery and 
torture. Let that spot be purified, or let it cease to be of New England. 
Let it be purified, or let it be set aside from the Christian world. Let it 
be put out of the circle of human sympathies and human regards ; and 
let civilized man henceforth have no communion with it." 

In 1830, he honored Nathan Dane for the Ordinance which 
makes the difference between Ohio and Kentucky, and 
honorably vindicated that man who lived " too near the 
north star " for Southern eyes to see. " I regard domestic 
slavery," said Mr. Webster to Mr. Hayne, " as one of the 
greatest evils, both moral and political." * 

In 1837, at Niblo's Garden, he avowed his entire unwill- 
ingness to do any thing that should extend the slavery of 
the African race on this continent. Said he : — 

" On the general question of slavery, a great portion of the commu- 
nity is already strongly excited. The subject has not only attracted 
attention as a question of politics, but it has struck a far deeper-toned 
chord. It has arrested the religious feeling of the country ; it has taken 
strong hold on the consciences of men. He is a rash man, indeed, and 
little conversant with human nature, — and especially has he a very 
erroneous estimate of the character of the people of this country, — who 
supposes that a feeling of this kind is to be trifled with or despised. It 
will assuredly cause itself to be respected. It may be reasoned with ; it 
may be made willing — I believe it is entirely willing — to fulfil all existing 

* Works, vol. iii. p. 279 ; see also p. 2C3, etseq. 



51 

engagements, and all existing duties; to uphold and defend the Con- 
stitution as it is established, with whatever regrets about some provisions 
which it does actually contain. But to coerce it into silence, to restrain 
its free expression, to seek to compress and confine it, warm as it is, and 
more heated as such endeavors would inevitably render it, — should this 
be attempted, I know nothing, even in the Constitution or in the Union 
itself, which would not be endangered by the explosion which might 
follow." * 

He always declared that slavery was a local matter of the 
South ; sectional, not national. In 1830 he took the ground 
that the general government had nothing to do with it. In 
1840, standing "beneath an October sun" at Richmond, he 
declared again that there was no power, direct or indirect, in 
Congress or the general government, to interfere in the 
smallest degree with the "institutions" of the South, f 

At first he opposed the annexation of Texas ; he warned 
men against it in 1837. He went so far as to declare : — 

" I do say that the annexation of Texas would tend to prolong the 
duration and increase the extent of African slavery on this continent. I 
have long held that opinion, and I would not now suppress it for any con- 
sideration on earth ! and because it does increase the evils of slavery, 
because it will increase the number of slaves and prolong the duration of 
their bondage, — because it does all this, I oppose it without condition 
and without qualification, at this time and all times, now and for euer." J 

He prepared some portions of the Address of the Mas- 
sachusetts Anti-Texas Convention in 1845. But, as some 
of the leading Whigs of the North opposed that meeting 
and favored annexation, he did not appear at the Con- 
vention, but went off to New York. In 1845 he voted 
against annexation. He said that he had felt it to be his 
duty steadily, uniformly, and zealously to oppose it. He 
did not wish America to be possessed by the spirit of 
aggrandizement. He objected to annexation principally 
because Texas was a Slave State. § Here he stood with John 

* Works, vol. i. p. 356-7. X Works, vol. ii. p. 270. 

t Works, vol. ii. 93, et seq. § See Works, vol. ii. p. 552, ct teq. 



52 



Quincy Adams, but, alas ! did too little to oppose that annex- 
ation. Against him were Mr. Calhoun, the South, almost 
all the Democratic party of the North ; Mr. Van Buren 
losing his nomination on account of his hostility to new 
slave-soil ; and many of the capitalists of the North wished 
a thing that Mr. Webster wanted not. 

He objected to the Constitution of Texas. Why ? Be- 
cause it tied up the hands of the Legislature against the 
abolition of slavery. He said so on Forefathers' Day, two 
hundred and twenty-five years after the landing of the 
Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock. Then he could not forget his 
own proud words, uttered a quarter of a century before. I 
thought him honest then; I think so still. But he said that 
New England might have prevented annexation ; that Mas- 
sachusetts might have prevented annexation, only " she could 
not be roused." If he had labored then for freedom with as 
much vigor and earnestness as he wrought for slavery in 1850 
and 1851, Massachusetts would have been roused, New 
England would have risen as a single man, and annexation 
of new slave-soil have been put off till the Greek Kalends, a 
day beyond eternity. Yet he did some service in this work. 

After the outbreak of the Mexican war, the northern men 
sought to pass a law prohibiting slavery in the new territory 
gained from Mexico. The celebrated " Wilmot proviso" 
came up. Mr. Webster also wished to prohibit slavery in 
the new territory. In March, 1847, he presented to Con- 
gress the resolutions of the Massachusetts Legislature against 
the extension of slavery, — which had been passed unani- 
mously, — and he endorsed them all. 

" I thank her for it, and am proud of her ; for she has denounced the 
whole object for which our armies are now traversing the mountains of 
Mexico." " If any thing is certain, it is that the sentiment of the whole 
North is utterly opposed to the acquisition of territory to be formed into 
new Slave-holding States." * 

* " Congressional Globe," March, 1847, p. 555. 



53 



At the Whig Convention at Springfield, in 1847, he main- 
tained that the Wilmot Proviso was his " thunder." 

" Did I not commit myself in 1837 to the whole doctrine, fully, entire- 
ly] " " I cannot quite consent that more recent discoverers should claim 
the merit and take out a patent. We are to use the first and the lust and 
every occasion which offers to oppose the extension of slave power."* 

On the 10th of August, 1843, in the Senate of the United 
States, he said : — 

" My opposition to the increase of slavery in this country, or to the 
increase of slave-representation, is general and universal. It has no refer- 
ence to the lines of latitude or points of the compass. I shall oppose 
all such extension at all times and under all circumstances, even against all 
inducements, against all supposed limitations of great interests, against 
all combinations, against all compromises." 

He sought to gain the support of the Free Soilers in Mas- 
sachusetts, and encouraged their enterprise. Even when he 
denounced the nomination of General Taylor as " not fit to 
be made," he declared that he could stand on the Buffalo 
Platform ; its Anti-Slavery planks were good sound Whig 
timber ; he himself had had some agency in getting them 
out, and did not see the necessity of a new organization. 

But, alas ! all this was to pass away. Was he sincere in 
his opposition to the extension of slavery ? I always thought 
so. I think so still. But how inconsistent his conduct ! 

Yet, after all, on the 7th of March, 1850, he could make 
that speech — you know it too well. He refused to exclude 
slavery by law from California and New Mexico. It would 
" irritate " the South, would "re-enact the law of God." He 
declared Congress was bound to make four new Slave 
States out of Texas; to allow all the territory below 36° 
30' to become Slave States; he declared that he would 
give Texas fifty thousand square miles of land for slave- 
territory, and ten millions of dollars; would refund to Vir- 
ginia two hundred millions of dollars derived from the sales 

* Remarks in Convention at Springfield, Sept. 10, 1847; reported in 
" Boston Daily Advertiser." 



54 



of the public lands, to expatriate the free colored people from 
her soil ; that he would support the Fugitive Slave Bill, 
with all its amendments, "with all its provisions," "to the 
fullest extent." 

You know the Fugitive Slave Bill too well. It is bad 
enough now ; but when he first volunteered his support 
thereto, it was far worse, for then every one of the seven- 
teen thousand postmasters of America might be a legal 
kidnapper by that Bill. He pledged our own Massachusetts 
to support it, and that " with alacrity." 

My friends, you all know the speech of the 7th of March : 
you know how men felt when the telegraph brought the first 
news, they thought there must be some mistake ! They 
could not believe the lightning. You know how the Whig 
party, and the Democratic party, and the newspapers, treated 
the report. When the speech came in full, you know the 
effect. One of the most conspicuous men of the State, then 
in high office, declared that Mr. Webster " seemed inspired 
by the devil to the extent of his intellect." You know the 
indignation men felt, the sorrow and anguish. I think not a 
hundred prominent men in all New England acceded to the 
speech. But such was the power of that gigantic intellect, 
that, eighteen days after his speech, nine hundred and eighty- 
seven men of Boston sent him a letter, telling him that he 
had pointed out "the path of duty, convinced the under- 
standing and touched the conscience of a nation ; " and 
they expressed to him their " entire concurrence in the senti- 
ments of that speech," and their " heartfelt thanks for the 
inestimable aid it afforded to the preservation " of the Union. 

You remember the return of Mr. Webster to Boston ; the 
speech at the Revere House; his word that " discussion" on 
the subject of slavery must "in some way be suppressed ; " 
you remember the "disagreeable duty;" the question, if 
Massachusetts " will be just against temptation ; " whether 
"she will conquer her prejudices" in favor of the trial by 



55 



jury, of the unalienable rights of man, in favor of the 
Christian religion, and "those thoughts which wander through 
eternity." 

You remember the agony of our colored men. The Son 
of man came to Jerusalem to seek and to save that which 
was lost ; but Daniel Webster came to Boston to crush the 
poorest and most lost of men into the ground with the hoof 
of American power. 

At the moment of making that speech, Mr. Webster was 
a member of a French Abolition Society, which has for its 
object to protect, enlighten, and emancipate the African 
race ! * 

You all know what followed. The Fugitive Slave Law 
Bill passed. It was enforced. You remember the conster- 
nation of the colored people in Boston, New York, Buffalo, 
Philadelphia, — all over the land. You remember the 
speeches of Mr. Webster at Buffalo, Syracuse, and Albany, 
— his industry, never equalled before; his violence, his in- 
dignation, his denunciations. You remember the threat at 
Syracuse, that out of the bosom of the next Anti-slavery 
Convention should a fugitive slave be seized. You remem- 
ber the scorn that he poured out on men who pledged " their 
lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor," for the welfare 
of men. 

You remember the letters to Mr. Webster from New- 
buryport, Kennebec, Medford, and his " Neighbors in New 
Hampshire." You have not forgotten the " Union Meet- 
ings : " "Blue-light Federalists," and "Genuine Democrats 
dyed in the wool," united into one phalanx of Hunkerism 
and became his "retainers," lay and clerical, — the laymen 
maintaining that his political opinions were an amendment 
to the Constitution ; and the clergymen, that his public and 

* Institut d'Afrique pour l'Abolition de la Traitc et dc l'Esclavage. Art. ii. 
"II a pour but egalement de proteger, d'eclairer et d'emanciper la race 
Africaine." 



56 



private practice was one of the evidences of Christianity. 
You remember the sermons of Doctors of Divinity, proving 
that slavery was Christian, good Old Testament Christian, at 
the very least. You remember the offer of a man to deliver 
up his own brother. Andover went for kidnapping. The 
loftiest pulpits, — I mean those highest bottomed on the dol- 
lar, — they went also for kidnapping. There went up a 
shout against the fugitive from the metropolitan pulpits, 
" Away with such a fellow from the earth ! — Kidnap him, 
kidnap him ! " And when we said, mildly remonstrating, 
"Why, what evil has the poor black man done?" the 
answer was, — " We have a law, and by that law he ought 
to be a slave ! " 

You remember the first kidnappers which came here to 
Boston. Hughes was one of them, an ugly-looking fellow, 
that went back to die in a street-brawl in his own Georgia. 
He thirsted for the blood of Ellen Craft. 

You remember the seizure of Shadrach ; you remember 
his deliverance out of his fiery furnace. Of course it was an 
Angel who let him out ; for that court, — the kidnappers' 
court, — thirsting for human blood, spite of the "enlarge- 
ment of the testimony," after six trials, I think, has not found 
a man, who, at noonday and in the centre of the town, did 
the deed. So I suppose it was an Angel that did the deed, 
and miracles are not over yet. I hope you have not for- 
gotten Caphart, the creature which " whips women," the 
great ally of the Boston kidnappers. 

You remember the kidnapping of Thomas Sims; Fa- 
neuil Hall shut against the convention of the people ; the 
court-house in chains ; the police drilled in the square ; sol- 
diers in arms ; Faneuil Hall a barrack. You remember 
Fast Day, 1851, — at least I do. You remember the 
"Acorn" and Boston on the 12th of April. You have not 
forgotten the dreadful scenes at New York, Philadelphia, 
and Buffalo ; the tragedy at Christiana. 



57 



You have not forgotten Mr. Webster's definition of the 
object of government. In 1845, standing over the crave of 
Judge Story, he said, — " Justice is the great interest of 
mankind." I think he thought so too; but at New York, 
on the 18th of November, 1850, he said, — "The great 
object of government is the protection of property at home, 
and respect and renown abroad." 

He went to Annapolis, and made a speech complimenting 
a series of ultra-resolutions in favor of slavery and slave- 
catching. One of the resolutions made the execution of the 
Fugitive Slave Law the sole bond of the Union. The orator 
of Bunker Hill replied : — 

" Gentlemen, I concur in the sentiments expressed by you all — and I 
thank God they were expressed by you all — in the resolutions passed 
here on the 10th of December. And allow me to say, that any State, 
North or South, which departs one iota from the sentiment of that reso- 
lution, is disloyal to this Union. 

" Further, — so far as any act of that sort has been committed, — sucn 
a State has no portion of my regard. I do not sympathize with it. I 
rebuke it wherever I speak, and on all occasions where it is proper for me 
to express my sentiments. If there are States — and I am afraid there 
are — which have sought, by ingenious contrivances of State legislation, 
to thwart the fair exercise and fulfilment of the laws of Congress passed 
to carry into effect the compacts of the Constitution, — that State, so 

FAR, IS ENTITLED TO NO REGARD FROM ME. At THE NORTH THERE HAVE 
BEEN CERTAINLY SOME INTIMATIONS IN CERTAIN STATES OF SUCH A POLICY." 

' ' / hold the importance of maintaining these measures to be of the highest 
character and nature, every one of them out and out, and through and 
through. 1 have no confidence in anybody who seeks the repeal, in anybody 
who wishes to alter or modify these constitutional provisions. There they 
are. Many of these great measures are irrepealable. The settlement 
with Texas is as irrepealable as the admission of California. Other im- 
portant objects of legislation, if not in themselves in the nature of grants, 
and therefore not so irrepealable, are just as important ; and we are to 
hear no parleying upon it. We are to listen to no modification or qualifica- 
tion. They were passed in conformity with the provisions of the Consti- 
tution ; and they must be performed and abided by, in whatever event, 

AND AT WHATEVER COST." 

Surrounded by the Federalists of New England, when a 

9 



58 

young man, fresh in Congress, he stood out nobly for the 
right to discuss all matters. Every boy knows his brave 
words by heart : — 

"Important as I deem it, sir, to discuss, on all proper occasions, the 
policy of the measures at present pursued, it is still more important to 
maintain the right of such discussion in its full and just extent. Sentiments 
lately sprung up, and now growing popular, render it necessary to be 
explicit on this point. It is the ancient and constitutional right of this 
people to canvass public measures, and the merits of public men. It is a 
homebred right, a fireside privilege. It has ever been enjoyed in every 
house, cottage, and cabin in the nation. It is not to be drawn into con- 
troversy. It is as undoubted as the right of breathing the air, and walking 
on the earth. Belonging to private life as a right, it belongs to public life 
as a duty ; and it is the last duty which those whose representative I am 
shall find me to abandon. This high constitutional privilege I shall 
defend and exercise within this house and without this house, and in all 
places ; in time of war, in time of peace, and at all times. 

"Living, I will assert it; dying, I will assert it ; and should I leave 
no other inheritance to my children, by the blessing of God I will leave 
them the inheritance of Free Principles, and the example of a manly, 
independent, and constitutional defence of them." 

Then, in 1850, when vast questions, so intimately affecting 
the welfare of millions of men, were before the country, he 
told us to suppress agitation ! 

" Neither you nor I shall see the legislation of the country proceed in 
the old harmonious way, until the discussions in Congress and out of 
Congress upon the subject [of slavery] shall be in some way suppressed. 
Take that truth home with you, and take it as truth." 

"I shall support no agitations having their foundation in unreal and 
ghostly abstractions. "* 

The opponents of Mr. Webster, contending for the free- 
dom of all Americans, of all men, appealed from the Fugi- 
tive Slave Bill to " the element of all laws, out of which 
they are derived, to the end of all laws, for which they are 
designed and in which they are perfected." How did he 
resist the appeal ? You have not forgotten the speech at 
Capron Springs, on the 26th of June, 1851. " When noth- 

» Speech at the Revere House in Boston, April 29, 1850, in " Daily 
Advertiser" of April 30. 



59 

ing else will answer," says he, " they," the abolitionists, 
" invoke religion, and speak of the ' higher law ! ' " He of 
the granite hills of New Hampshire, looking on the moun- 
tains of Virginia, blue with loftiness and distance, said, 
" Gentlemen, this North Mountain is hisjh, the Blue llid^e 
higher still, the Alleghanies higher than either, and yet this 
' higher law' ranges further than an eagle's flight above the 
highest peaks of the Alleghanies ! No common vision can 
discern it ; no common and unsophisticated conscience can 
feel it ; the hearing of common men never learns its high 
behests; and, therefore, one would think it is not a safe law 
to be acted upon in matters of the highest practical moment. 
It is the code, however, of the abolitionists of the North." 

This speech was made at dinner. The next " sentiment " 
given after his was this : — 

" The Fugitive Slave Law — Upon its faithful execution depends the 
perpetuity of the Union." 

Mr. Webster made a speech in reply, and distinctly 
declared, — 

" You of the South have as much right to secure your fugitive slaves, 
as the North has to any of its rights and privileges of navigation and 
commerce." 

Do you think he believed that ? Daniel Webster knew 
better. In 1844, only seven years before, he had said, — 

"What! when all the civilized world is opposed to slavery; when 
morality, denounces it ; when Christianity denounces it ; when every 
thing respected, every thing good, bears one united witness against it, is 
it for America — America, the land of Washington, the model republic of 
the world — is it for America to come to its assistance, and to insist that 
the maintenance of slavery is necessary to the support of her institu- 
tions?" 

How do you think the audience answered then ? With 
six and twenty cheers. It was in Faneuil Hall. Said .Mr. 
Webster, " These are Whig principles ; " and, with these, 
" Faneuil Hall may laugh a siege to scorn." That speech 



60 

is not printed in his collection ! How could it stand side 
by side with the speech of the 7th of March ? 

In 1846, a Whig Convention voted to do its possible to 
" defeat all measures calculated to uphold slavery, and pro- 
mote all constitutional measures for its overthrow ; " to 
" oppose any further addition of Slaveholding States to this 
Union;" and to have "free institutions for all, chains and 
fetters for none." 

Then Mr. Webster declared he had a heart which beat 
for every thing favorable to the progress of human liberty, 
either here or abroad ; then, when in " the dark and troubled 
night" he saw only the Whig party as his Bethlehem Star, 
he rejoiced in "the hope of obtaining the power to resist 
whatever threatens to extend slavery." * Yet after New 
York had kidnapped Christians, and with civic pomp sent 
her own sons into slavery, he could go to that city and say, 
" It is an air which for the last few months I love to inhale. 
It is a patriotic atmosphere : constitutional breezes fan it 
every day." f 

To accomplish a bad purpose, he resorted to mean artifice, 
to the low tricks of vulgar adventurers in politics. He used 
the same weapons once wielded against him, — misrepresen- 
tation, denunciation, invective. Like his old enemy of New 
Hampshire, he carried his political quarrel into private life. 
He cast off the acquaintance of men intimate with him for 
twenty or thirty years. The malignity of his conduct, as 
it was once said of a great apostate, " was hugely aggravated 
by those rare abilities whereof God had given him the use." 
Time had not in America bred a man before bold enough 
to consummate such aims.as his. In this New Hampshire 
Strafford, " despotism had at length obtained an instrument 
with mind to comprehend, and resolution to act upon, its 
principles in their length and breadth ; and enough of his 

* Speech at Faneuil Hall, Sept. 23, 1846, reported in the "Daily Adver- 
tiser," Sept. 24. 

t Speech at New York, May 12, 1851, in « Boston Atlas " of May 14. 



61 



purposes were effected by him to enable mankind to see as 
from a tower the end of all." 

What was the design of all this ? It was to " save the 
Union"." Such was the cry. Was the Union in dancer ! 
Here were a few non-resistants at the North, who said, We 
will have " no union with slaveholders." There was a party 
of seceders at the South, who periodically blustered about 
disunion. Could these men bring the Union into peril ? 
Did Daniel Webster think so ? I shall never insult that 
giant intellect by the thought. He knew South Carolina, 
he knew Georgia, very well.* Mr. Benton knew of no " dis- 
tress," even at the time when it was alleged that the nation 
was bleeding at " five gaping wounds," so that it would take 
the whole Omnibus full of compromises to stanch the blood : 
" All the political distress is among the politicians." f I 
think Mr. Webster knew there was no danger of a dissolu- 
tion of the Union. But here is a proof that he knew it. In 
18-50, on the 22d of December, he declared, " There is no 
longer imminent danger of the dissolution of the United 
States. We shall live, and not die." But, soon after, he 
Avent about saving the Union again, and again, and again, — 
saved it at Buffalo, Albany, Syracuse, at Annapolis, and 
then at Capron Springs. 

I say there was no real danger ; but my opinion is a mere 
opinion, and nothing more. Look at a fact. We have the 
most delicate test of public opinion, — the state of the public 
funds ; the barometer which indicates any change in the po- 
litical weather. If the winds blow down the Tiber, Roman 
funds fall. Talk of war between France and England, the 
stocks go down at Paris and London. The foolish talk about 
the fisheries last summer lowered American stocks in the 
market, to the great gain of prudent and far-sighted brokers, 
who knew there was no danger. But all this time, when .Mr. 

* See his description in 1830 of the process and conclusion of nullification. 
Works, vol. iii. p. 337, et seq. 

t Speech in Senate, Sept. 10, 1S50. 



62 



Webster was telling us the ship of state was going to pieces, 
and required undergirding by the Fugitive Slave Bill, and 
needed the kidnapper's hand at the helm ; while he was ad- 
vising Massachusetts to " conquer her prejudices " in favor of 
the unalienable rights of man ; while he was denouncing the 
friends of freedom, and calling on us to throw over to Texas 
— the monster of the deep that threatened to devour the 
ship of state — fifty thousand square miles of territory, and 
ten millions of dollars ; and to the other monster of seces- 
sion to cast over the trial by jury, the dearest principles of 
the Constitution, of manhood, of justice, and of religion, 
" those thoughts that wander through eternity ; " while he 
himself revoked the noblest words of his whole life, throw- 
ing over his interpretation of the Constitution, his respect 
for State rights, for the common law, his own morality, his 
own religion, and his own God, — the funds of the United 
States did not go down one mill. You asked the capitalist, 
" Is the Union in danger ? " He answered, " O yes ! it is in 
the greatest peril." " Then will you sell me your stocks 
lower than before ? " " Not a mill ; not one mill — not the 
ten hundredth part of a dollar in a hundred ! " To ask men 
to make such a sacrifice, at such a time, from such a motive, 
is as if you should ask the captain of the steamer " Niagara," 
in Boston harbor, in fair weather, to throw over all his cargo, 
because a dandy in the cabin was blowing the fire with his 
breath. No, my friends, I shall not insult the majesty of 
that intellect with the thought that he believed there was 
danger to the Union. There was not any danger of a storm ; 
not a single cat's-paw in the sky ; not a capful of bad weather 
between Cape Sable and the Lake of the Woods ! 

But suppose the worst came to the worst, are there no 
other things as bad as disunion ? The Constitution — does 
it " establish justice, ensure domestic tranquillity," and " se- 
cure the. blessings of liberty" to all the citizens? Nobody 
pretends it, — with every sixth man made merchandise, and 
not an inch of free soil covered by the Declaration of Inde- 



63 



pendence, save the five thousand miles which Mr. Webster 
ceded away. Is disunion worse than slavery ? Perhaps not 
even to commerce, which the Federalists thought "still 
more dear " than Union. But what if the South seceded 
next year, and the younger son took the portion of goods 
that falleth to him, when America divides her living ? Ima- 
gine the condition of the new nation, — the United States 
South ; a nation without schools, or the desire for them ; 
without commerce, without manufactures ; with six million 
white men and three million slaves; working with that 
barbarous tool, slave-labor, an instrument as ill-suited to 
these times as a sickle of stone to cut grain with ! How 
would that new democracy appear in the eyes of the world, 
when the public opinion of the nations looks hard at tyranny ? 
It would not be long before this younger son, having spent 
all with riotous living, and devoured his substance with 
slavery, brought down to the husks that the swine do eat, — 
would arise, and go to his father, and say, " Father, forgive 
me ; I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight, and am 
no more worthy to be called thy son. Make me as one of 
thy hired servants." The Southern men know well, that, if 
the Union were dissolved, their riches would take to itself 
legs, and run away, — or firebrands, and make a St. Domingo 
out of Carolina ! They cast off the North ! they set up for 
themselves ! " Tush ! tush ! Fear boys with bugs ! " 

Here is the reason. He wanted to be President. That 
was all of it. Before this he had intrigued, — always in a 
clumsy sort, for he was organized for honesty, and cunning 
never throve in his keeping, — had stormed and blustered 
and bullied. "Gen. Taylor the second choice of Massachu- 
setts for the President," quoth he : " I tell you I am to be the 
first, and Massachusetts has no second choice." Mr. Clay 
must not be nominated in '44 ; in '48 Gen. Taylor's was a 
" nomination not fit to be made." He wanted the office 
himself. This time he must storm the North, and conciliate 
the South. This was his bid for the Presidency, — fifty 



64 



thousand square miles of territory and ten millions of dollars 
to Texas; four new Slave States; slavery in Utah and New 
Mexico; the Fugitive Slave Bill; and two hundred millions 
of dollars offered to Virginia to carry free men of color to 
Africa. 

He never labored so before, and he had been a hard- 
working man. What speeches he made at Boston, New 
York, Philadelphia, Albany, Buffalo, Syracuse, Annapolis ! 
What letters he wrote ! His intellect was never so active, 
nor gave such proofs of Herculean power. The hottest 
headed Carolinian did not put his feet faster or further on 
in the support of slavery. He 

" Stood up the strongest and the fiercest spirit 
That fought 'gainst Heaven, now fiercer by despair." 

Once he could say, — 

" By general instruction, we seek as far as possible to purify the whole 
moral atmosphere ; to keep good sentiments uppermost, and to turn the 
strong current of feeling and opinion, as well as the censures of the law, 
and the denunciations of religion, against immorality and crime. We 
hope for a security beyond the law, and above the law, in the prevalence 
of enlightened and well-principled moral sentiment." * 

111 1820 he could say, "All conscience ought to be 
respected ; " in 1850 it is only a fanatic who heeds his con- 
science, and there is no higher law. In scorn of the higher 
law, he far outwent his transatlantic prototype. Even 
Strafford, in his devotion to "Thorough," had some respect 
for the fundamental law of nature, and said, — "If I must 
be a traitor to man or perjured to God, I will be faithful to 
my Creator." 

The fountains of his great deep were broken up — it rained 
forty days and forty nights, and brought a flood of slavery 
over this whole land ; it covered the market, and the factory, 

* Debate in the Mass. Convention, Dec. 5, 1820. " Journal," ubi sup. 
p. 145 ; erroneously printed 245. 



65 

and the court-house, and the warehouse, and the college, 
and rose up high over the tops of the tallest steeples ! But 
the Ark of Freedom went on the face of the waters, — above 
the market, above the factory, above the court-house, over 
the college, higher than the tops of the tallest steeples, it 
floated secure; for it bore the Religion that is to save the 
world, and the Lord God of Hosts had shut it in. 

What flattery was there from Mr. Webster ! What flat- 
tery to the South ! what respect for Southern nullifiers ! 
" The Secessionists of the South take a different course of 
remark ; " they appeal to no higher law ! " They are learned 
and eloquent ; they are animated and full of spirit ; they are 
high-minded and chivalrous ; they state their supposed inju- 
ries and causes of complaint in elegant phrases and exalted 
tones of speech." * 

He derided the instructions of his adopted State. 

" It has been said that I have, by the course that I have thought proper 
to pursue, displeased a portion of the people of Massachusetts. Well, 
suppose I did. Suppose I displeased all the people of that State, — what 
of that? 

" What had I to do with instructions from Massachusetts upon a ques- 
tion affecting the whole nation ! " "I assure you, gentlemen, I cared no 
more for the instructions of Massachusetts than I did for those of any 
other State !" f 

What scorn against the " fanatics " of the North, against 
the Higher Law, and the God thereof! 

" New England, it is well known, is the chosen seat of the Abolition 
presses and the Abolition Societies. There it is principally that the for- 
mer cheer the morning by full columns of lamentation over the fate of 
human beings free by nature and by a law above the Constitution, — but 
sent back, nevertheless, chained and manacled to slavery and to stripes ; 
and the latter refresh themselves from daily toil by orgies of the night 
devoted to the same outpourings of philanthropy, mingling all the while 
their anathemas at what they call ' men-catching ' with the most horrid 
and profane abjuration of the Christian Sabbath, and indeed of the whole 



* Speech at Capron Springs. t Ibid. 
10 



66 

Divine Revelation : they sanctify their philanthropy by irreligion and 
profanity ; they manifest their charity by contempt of God and his com- 
mandments." 

" Depend upon it, the law [the Fugitive Slave Bill] will be executed in 
its spirit and to its letter. It will be executed in all the great cities,— 
here in Syracuse, — in the midst of the next Anti-slavery Convention, if 
the occasion shall arise ; then we shall see what becomes of their ' lives 
and their sacred honor ' ! " * 

How he mocked at the " higher law," "that exists some- 
where between us and the third heaven, I never knew exactly 
where." 

The anti-slavery men were " insane persons," "some small 
bodies of fanatics," " not fit for a lunatic asylum." f 

To secure his purposes, he left no stone unturned ; he 
abandoned his old friends, treating them with rage and inso- 
lence. He revolutionized his own morals, and his own 
religion. The strong advocate of liberty, of justice to all 
men, the opponent of slavery, turned round and went square 
over. But his old speeches did not follow him : a speech 
is a fact ; a printed word becomes immovable as the Alps. 
His former speeches, all the way from Hanover to Washing- 
ton, were a line of fortresses grim with cannon each levelled 
at his new position. 

How low he stooped to supplicate the South, to cringe 
before the Catholics, to fawn upon the Methodists at Fa- 
neuil Hall ! Oh, what a prostitution of what a kingly power 
of thought, of speech, of will ! 

The effect of Mr. "Webster's speech was amazing : at first 
Northern men abhorred it; next they accepted it. Why 
was this ? He himself has perhaps helped us understand the 
mystery : — 

"The enormity of some crimes so astonishes men as to subdue their 
minds, and they lose the desire for justice in a morbid admiration of the 
great criminal and the strangeness of the crime." 



* Speech at Syracuse (New York, 1851). 

t See speech at Buffalo, 22d May, 1851. Vol. ii. p. 544, et seq. 



67 



Slavery, the most hideous snake which Southern regions 
breed, with fifteen unequal feet, came crawling North ; fold 
on fold, and ring on ring, and coil on coil, the venomed 
monster came: then Avarice, the foulest worm which North- 
ern cities gender in their heat, went crawling South ; with 
many a wriggling curl, it wound along its way. At length 
they met, and, twisting up in their obscene embrace, the twain 
became one monster, Hunkerism ; theme unattempted yet in 
prose or song: there was no North, no South; they were 
one poison ! The dragon wormed its way along, — crawled 
into the church of commerce, wherein the minister baptized 
the beast, " Salvation." From the ten commandments the 
dragon's breath effaced those which forbid to kill and covet, 
with the three between ; then, with malignant tooth, gnawed 
out the chief commandments whereon the law and prophets 
hang. This amphisbsena of the Western World then swal- 
lowed down the holiest words of Hebrew or of Christian 
speech, and in their place it left a hissing at the higher law 
of God. Northward and Southward wormed the thing along 
its track, leaving the stain of its breath in the people's face ;• 
and its hissing against the Lord rings yet in many a speech : 

" Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires, 
And, unawares, morality expires." 

Then what a shrinking was there of great consciences, and 
hearts, and minds! So Milton, fabling, sings of angels 
fallen from their first estate, seeking to enter Pandemo- 
nium : — 

«« They but now who seemed 
In bigness to surpass Earth's giant-sons, 
Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room 

Throng numberless, 

to smallest forms 

Reduced their shapes immense, and were at large, 
Though without number still, amidst the hall 
Of that infernal court." 



/ 



68 



Mr. Webster stamped his foot, and broke through into 
the great hollow of practical atheism, which undergulfs the 
state and church. Then what a caving in was there ! The 
firm-set base of northern cities quaked and yawned with 
gaping rents. " Penn's sandy foundation " shook again, and 
black men fled from the city of brotherly love, as doves flee 
from a farmer's barn when summer lightning stabs the roof. 
There was a twist in Faneuil Hall, and the doors could not 
open wide enough for Liberty to regain her ancient Cradle; 
only soldiers, greedy to steal a man, themselves stole out 
and in. Ecclesiastic quicksand ran down the hole amain. 
Metropolitan churches toppled, and pitched, and canted, 
and cracked, their bowing walls all out of plumb. Colleges, 
broken from the chain which held them in the stream of time, 
rushed towards the abysmal rent. Harvard led the way, 
Christo et Ecclesice in its hand. Down plunged Andover, 
" Conscience and the Constitution " clutched in its ancient, 
failing arm. New Haven began to cave in. Doctors of 
Divinity, orthodox, heterodox with only a doxy of doubt, 
" no settled opinion," had great alacrity in sinking, and 
went down quick, as live as ever, into the pit of Korah, Da- 
than, and Abiram, the bottomless pit of lower law, — one 
with his mother, cloaked by a surplice, hid neath his sinister 
arm, and an acknowledged brother grasped by his remaining 
limb. Fossils of theology, dead as Ezekiel's bones, took 
to their feet again, and stood up for most arrant wrong. 
"There is no higher law of God," quoth they, as they 
went down ; " no golden rule, only the statutes of men." A 
man with mythologic ear might fancy that he heard a snick- 
ering laugh run round the world below, snorting, whinnying, 
and neighing, as it echoed from the infernal spot pressed 
by the fallen monsters of ill-fame, who, thousands of years 
a (T , on the same errand, plunged down the self-same way. 
What tidings the echo bore, Dante nor Milton could not tell. 
Let us leave that to darkness, and to silence, and to death. 



69 



But spite of all this, in every city, in every town, in every 
college, and in each capsizing church, there were found faith- 
ful men, who feared not the monster, heeded not the stamp- 
ing, — nay, Doctors of Divinity were found living, — in all 
their houses there was light, and the destroying angel shook 
them not. The word of the Lord came in open vision to their 
eye ; they had their lamps trimmed and burning, their loins 
girt ; they stood road-ready. Liberty and Religion turned in 
thither, and the slave found bread and wings. " When my 
father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will hold 
me up ! " 

After the 7th of March, Mr. Webster became the ally of 
the worst of men, the forefront of kidnapping. The orator 
of Plymouth Rock was the advocate of slavery ; the hero of 
Bunker Hill put chains around Boston Court-house ; the 
applauder of Adams and Jefferson was a tool of the slave- 
holder, and a keeper of slavery's dogs, the associate of the 
kidnapper, and the mocker of men who loved the right. 
Two years he lived with that rabble rout for company, his 
name the boast of every vilest thing. " Oh, how unlike the 
place from whence he fell ! " In early life, Mr. Hill, of New 
Hampshire, pursued him with unrelenting bitterness. Of 
late years Mr. Webster had complained of this, declaring 
that " Mr. Hill had done more than any other man to de- 
bauch the character of New Hampshire, bringing the bitter- 
ness of politics into private life." After that day of St. 
Judas, Mr. Webster pursued the same course which Mr. 
Hill had followed forty years before, and the two enemies 
were reconciled.* The Herod of the Democrats and the 
Pilate of Federalism were made friends by the Fugitive 
Slave Bill, and rode in the same " Omnibus," — " a blue-light 
Federalist " and " a genuine Democrat dyed in the wool." 

Think of him ! — the Daniel Webster of Plymouth Rock 

* See Letter of Hon. Isaac Hill (April 17, 1850), and Mr. "Webster's 
Reply. 



70 



advocating the Compromise Measures ! the Daniel Webster 
of Faneuil Hall, who spoke with the inspiration of Samuel 
Adams and the tongue of James Otis, honoring the holy dead 
with his praise ! — think of him at Buffalo, Albany, Syracuse, 
scoffing at modern men, who " perilled their lives, their for- 
tunes, and their sacred honor," to visit the fatherless and the 
widows in their affliction, and to keep themselves unspotted 
from the world ! — think of him threatening with the gallows 
such as clothed the naked, fed the hungry, visited the pri- 
soner, and gave a cup of cold water to him that was ready 
to perish ! Think of Daniel Webster become the assassin of 
Liberty in the Capitol ! Think of him, full of the Old Testa- 
ment and dear Isaac Watts, scoffing at the higher law of 
God, while the mountains of Virginia looked him in the 
face ! , 

But what was the recompense ? Ask Massachusetts, — 
ask the North. Let the Baltimore Convention tell. He 
was the greatest candidate before it. General Scott is a 
little man when the feathers are gone. Fillmore, you know 
him. Both of these, for greatness of intellect, compared to 
Webster, were as a single magpie measured by an eagle. 
Look at his speeches ; look at his forehead ; look at his 
face ! The two hundred and ninety-three delegates came 
together and voted. They gave him thirty-three votes, and 
that only once ! Where were the men of the " lower law," 
who made denial of God the first principle of their politics ? 
Where were they who in Faneuil Hall scoffed and jeered 
at the " higher law; " or at Capron Springs, who " laughed" 
when he mocked at the law higher than the Virginia hills ? 
Where were the kidnappers ? 

The " lower law " men and the kidnappers strained them- 
selves to the utmost, and he had thirty-three votes. 

Where was the South ? Fifty-three times did the Con- 
vention ballot, and the South never gave him a vote, — 
not a vote; no, not one! Northern friends — I honor their 



71 • 

affection for the great man— went to the South, and be^ed 
for the poor and paltry pittance of a seeming vote, in order 
to break the bitterness of the fall ! They went " with tears in 
their eyes," and in mercy's name, and asked that crumb from 
the Southern board. But the cruel South, treacherous to 
him whom she beguiled to treason against God, she an- 
swered, " Not a vpte ! " It was the old fate of men who 
betray. Southern politicians "did not dare dispense with 
the services thrust on him, but revenged themselves by 
withdrawing his well-merited reward." It was- the fate of 
Strafford, the fate % of Wolsey. When Lasthenes and Eu- 
thycrates betrayed Olynthus to Macedonian Philip, fighting 
against the liberties of Greece, they were distinguished — 
if Demosthenes be right — only by the cruelty of their fate. 
Mr. Webster himself had a forefeeling that it might be so ; 
for, on the morning of his fatal speech, he told a brother 
Senator, " I have my doubts that the speech I am going to 
make will ruin me." But he played the card with a heavy, 
a rash, and not a skilful hand. It was only the playing 
of a card, — his last card. Mr. Calhoun had said, " The far- 
thest Southerner is nearer to us than the nearest Northern 
man." They could trust him with their work, — not with its 
covenanted pay ! 

Oh ! Cardinal Wolsey ! there was never such a fall. 
" He fell, like Lucifer, never to hope again ! " The tele- 
graph which brought him tidings of his fate was a thunder- 
stroke out of the clear sky. No wonder that he wept, and 
said, " I am a disgraced man, a ruined man ! " His early, 
his last, his fondest dream of ambition broke, and only ruin 
filled his hand ! What a spectacle to move pity in the stones 
of the street ! 

But it seemed as if nothing could be spared him. His cup 
of bitterness, already full, was made to run over ; for joyous 
men, full of wine and the nomination, called him up at mid- 
night out of his bed — the poor, disappointed old man ! — to 



72 



" congratulate him on the nomination of Scott ! " And they 
forced the great man, falling back on his self-respect, to say- 
that the next morning he should " rise with the lark, as 
jocund and as gay." 

Was not that enough ? Oh, there is no pity in the hearts 
of men ! Even that was not enough ! Northern friends 
went to him, and asked him to advise men to vote for Gen. 
Scott ! 

Gen. Scott is said to be an anti-slavery man ; but soon as 
the political carpenters put the " planks " together at Balti- 
more, he scrambled upon the platform, -and stands there on 
all-fours to this day, looking for " fellow-citizens, native and 
adopted," listening for "that brogue," and declaring that, 
after all, he is " only a common man." Did you ever read 
Gen. Scott's speeches ? Then think of asking Daniel Web- 
ster to recommend him for President, — Scott in the chair, 
and Webster out! That was gall after the wormwood! 
They say that Daniel Webster did write a letter advocating 
the election of Scott, and afterwards said, " I still live." If 
he did so, attribute it to the wanderings of a great mind, 
shattered by sickness ; and be assured he would have taken 
it back, if he had ever set his firm foot on the ground 
again ! 

Daniel Webster went down to Marshfield' — to die ! He 
died of his 7th of March speech ! That word endorsed on 
Mason's Bill drove thousands of fugitives from America to 
Canada. It put chains round our court-house ; it led men 
to violate the majesty of law all over the North. I violated 
it, and so did you. It sent Thomas Sims in fetters to his 
jail and his scourging at Savannah ; it caused practical 
atheism to be preached in many churches of New York, 
Philadelphia, Washington, and, worst of all, Boston itself! 
and then,, with its own recoil, it sent Daniel Webster to 
his grave, giving him such a reputation as a man would 
not wish for his utterest foe. 



73 



No event in the American Revolution was half so terrible 
as his speeches in defence of slavery and kidnapping, hia 

abrogation of the right to discuss all measures of the govern- 
ment. We lost battles again and again, lost campaign- — 
our honor we never lost. The army was without powder at 
Cambridge, in '76; without shoes and blankets in '78; and 
the bare feet of New England valor marked the ice with blood 
when they crossed the Delaware. But we were never with- 
out conscience, never without morality. Powder might fail, 
and shoes drop, old and rotten, from soldiers' feet. But the 
love of God was in the American heart, and no American 
general said, " There is no law higher than the Blue 
Ridge ! " Nay, they appealed to God's higher law, not 
thinking that in politics religion makes men mad. 

While the Philip of slavery was thundering at our gate, 
the American Demosthenes advised us to "conquer our pre- 
judices" against letting him in; to throw down the wall 
"with alacrity," and bid him come: it was a constitutional 
Philip. How silver dims the edge of steel ! When the 
tongue of freedom was cut out' of the mouth of Europe by 
the sabres of tyrants, and only in the British Isles and in 
Saxon speech could liberty be said or sung, the greatest 
orator who ever spoke the language of Milton and Burke 
told us to suppress discussion ! In the dark and troubled 
night of American politics, our tallest Pharo on the shore 
hung out a false beacon. 

Said Mr. Webster once, " There will always be some per- 
verse minds who will vote the wrong way, let the justice of 
the case be ever so apparent."* Did he know what he was 
doing ? Too well. In the winter of 1850, he partially pre- 
pared a speech in defence of freedom. Was his own 
amendment to Mason's Bill designed to be its text?f 
Some say so. I know not. He wrote to an intimate and 

* "Columbian Centinel," March 11, 1820. 
t Works, vol. v. p. 373-4. 
11 



74 



sagacious friend in Boston, asking, How far can I go in 
defence of freedom, and have Massachusetts sustain me ? 
The friend repaid the confidence and said, Far as you 
like ! Mr. Webster went as far as New Orleans, as far as 
Texas and the Del Norte, in support of slavery ! When 
that speech came, — the rawest wind of March, — the friend 
declared : It seldom happens to any man to be able to 
disgrace the generation he is born in. But the opportunity 
has presented itself to Mr. Webster, and he has done the 
deed! 

Cardinal Wolsey fell, and lost nothing but his place. 
Bacon fell ; the " wisest, brightest," lived long enough to 
prove himself the " meanest of mankind." Strafford came 
down. But it was nothing to the fall of Webster. The 
Anglo-Saxon race never knew such a terrible and calamit- 
ous ruin. His downfall shook the continent. Truth fell 
prostrate in the street. Since then, the court-house has a 
twist in its walls, and equity cannot enter its door ; the stee- 
ples point awry, and the " higher law " is hurled down from 
the pulpit. One priest would enslave all the " posterity of 
Ham," and another would drive a fugitive from his own 
door ; a third is certain that Paul was a kidnapper ; and a 
fourth has the assurance of his consciousness that Christ 
Jesus would have sold and bought slaves. Practical atheism 
became common in the pulpits of America ; they forgot that 
there was a God. In the hard winter of 1780, if Fayette 
had copied Arnold, and Washington gone over to the enemy, 
the fall could not have been worse. Benedict Arnold fell, 
but fell through, — so -low that no man quotes him for prece- 
dent. Aaron Burr is only a warning. Webster fell, and he 
lay there " not less than archangel ruined," and enticed the 
nation in his fall. Shame on us! — all those three are of 
New England blood! 

My friends, it is hard for me to say these things. My 



i:> 



mother's love is warm in my own bosom still, and I hate to 
say these words. But God is just; and, in the presence of 
God, I stand here to tell the truth. 

Did men honor Daniel Webster ? So did I. I Avas a boy 
ten years old when he stood at Plymouth Rock, and never 
shall I forget how his clarion-words rang in my boyish heart. 
I was but a little boy when he spoke those brave words in 
behalf of Greece. I learned to hate slavery from the lips of 
that great intellect ; and now that he takes back his word, 
and comes himself to be Slavery's slave, I hate it ten-fold 
harder than before, because it made a bondman out of that 
proud, powerful nature. 

Did men love him ? So did I. Not blindlv, but as I loved 
a great mind, as the defender of the Constitution and the 
unalienable rights of man. 

Sober and religious men of Boston yet mourn that their 
brothers were kidnapped in the city of Hancock and Adams 
— it was Daniel Webster Avho kidnapped them. Massachu- 
setts has wept at the deep iniquity which was wrought in her 
capital — it was done by the man whom she welcomed to 
her bosom, and long had loved to honor. Let history, as 

" Sad as angels at the good man's sin, 
Blush to record, and weep to give it in ! " 

Do men mourn for him ? See how they mourn ! . The 
streets are hung with black. The newspapers are sad col- 
ored. The shops are put in mourning. The Mayor and 
Aldermen wear crape. Wherever his death is made known, 
the public business stops, and flags drop half-mast down. 
The courts adjourn. The courts of Massachusetts — at 
Boston, at Dedham, at Lowell, all adjourn ; the courts of 
New Hampshire, of Maine, of New York ; even at Balti- 
more and Washington, the courts adjourn ; for the great 
lawyer is dead, and Justice must wait another day. Only 
the United States Court, in Boston, trying a man for helping 



76 



Shadrach out of the furnace of the kidnappers, — the court 
that executes the Fugitive Slave Law, — that does not 
adjourn ; that keeps on; its worm dies not, and the fire of 
its persecution is not quenched, when death puts out the 
lamp of life. Injustice is hungry for its prey, and must not 
be balked. It was very proper ! Symbolical court of the 
Fugitive Slave Bill — it does not respect life, why should it 
death? and, scorning liberty, why should it heed decorum? 
Did the judges deem that Webster's spirit, on its way to 
God, would look at Plymouth Rock, then pause on the 
spots made more classic by his eloquence, and gaze at Bun- 
ker Hill, and tarry his hour in the august company of noble 
men at Faneuil Hall, and be glad to know that injustice was 
chanting his requiem in that court ? They greatly misjudge 
the man. I know Daniel Webster better, and I appeal for 
him against his idly judging friends.* 

Do men now mourn for him, the great man eloquent ? I 
put on sackcloth long ago ; I mourned for him when he wrote 
the Creole letter, which surprised Ashburton, Briton that he 
was. I mourned when he spoke the speech of the 7th of 
March. I mourned when the Fugitive Slave Bill passed 
Congress, and the same cannons which have fired minute- 
guns for him fired also one hundred rounds of joy for the 
forging of a new fetter for the fugitive's foot. I mourned 
for him when the kidnappers first came to Boston, — hated 
then, now " respectable men," " the companions of princes," 
enlarging their testimony in the court. I mourned when my 
own parishioners fled from the "stripes" of New England to 
the "stars" of Old England. I mourned when Ellen Craft 
fled to my house for shelter and for succor, and for the first 

* I am told that there was some technical reason why that court conti- 
nued its session. I know nothing of the motive ; but I believe it was the fact 
that the only court in the United States which did not adjourn at the intel- 
ligence of the death of Mr. Webster, was the court which was seeking to 
punish a man for rescuing Shadrach from the fiery furnace made ready for 
him. 



77 



time in all my life I armed this hand. I mourned when I 
married William and Ellen Craft, and gave them a Bible 
lor their soul, and a sword to keep that soul living in a 
living frame. I mourned when the court-house was hung in 
chains ; when Thomas Sims, from his dungeon, sent out his 
petition for prayers, and the, churches did not dare to pray. 
I mourned when that poor outcast in yonder dungeon sent 
for me to visit him, and when I took him by the hand which 
Daniel Webster was chaining in that hour. I mourned for 
Webster when we prayed our prayer and sang our psalm 
on Long Wharf in the morning's gray. I mourned then : 
1 shall not cease to mourn. The flags will be removed 
from the streets, the cannon will sound their other notes of 
joy; but, for me, I shall go mourning all my days; I shall 
refuse to be comforted ; and at last I shall lay down my 
gray hairs Avith weeping and with sorrow in the grave. O 
Webster ! Webster ! would God that I had died for thee ! 

He was a powerful man physically, a man of a large 
mould, — a great body and a great brain : he seemed made 
to last a hundred years. Since Socrates, there has seldom 
been a head so massive huge, save the stormy features of 
Michael Angelo, — 

" The hand that rounded Peter's dome, 
And groined the aisles of Christian Rome ; " 

he who sculptured Day and Night into such beautiful forms, 

looked them in his face before he chiselled them in stone. 

The cubic capacity of his head surpassed all former measure- 
ments of mind. Since Charlemagne, I think there has not 
been such a grand figure in all Christendom. A large man, 
decorous in dress, dignified in deportment, he walked as if 
he felt himself a king. Men from the country, who knew 
him not, stared at him as he passed through our streets. 
The coal-heavers and porters of London looked on him as 



78 



one of the great forces of the globe : they recognized a 
native king. In the Senate of the United States, he looked 
an emperor in that council. Even the majestic Calhoun 
seemed common compared with him. Clay looked vulgar, 
and Van Buren but a fox. His countenance, like Strafford's, 
was " manly black." His mind — 

" "Was lodged in a fair and lofty room. 
On his brow 

a 

Sat terror, mixed with wisdom ; and, at once, 
Saturn and Hermes in his countenance." 

What a mouth he had ! It was a lion's mouth ; yet there 
was a sweet grandeur in his smile, and a woman's softness 
when he would. What a brow it was ! what eyes ! like 
charcoal fires in the bottom of a deep, dark well. His face 
was rugged with volcanic fires, — great passions and great 
thoughts. 

" The front of Jove himself; 
An eye like Mars to threaten and command." 

Let me examine the elements of Mr. Webster's character 
in some detail. Divide the faculties, not bodily, into intel- 
lectual, moral, affectional, and religious, and see what he had 
of each, beginning with the highest. 

I. His latter life shows that he had no large development 
of the religious powers, which join men consciously to the 
infinite God. He had little religion in the higher meaning 
of that word, much in the lower. He had the conventional 
form of religion, — the formality of outward and visible 
prayer ; reverence for the Bible and the name of Christ ; 
attendance at meeting on Sundays and at the " ordinances 
of religion." He was a " devout man," in the ecclesiastic 
sense of the word. But it is easy to be devout, hard to be 
moral. Of the two men, in the parable, who " went up to 
the temple to pray," only the Pharisee was "devout" in 
the common sense. Devoutness took the Priest and the 



79 



Levite to the temple: morality took the good Samaritan to 
the man fallen among thieves. 

His reputation for religion seems to rest on these facts, 

that he read the Bible, and knew more passages from it 
than most political editors, more than some, clergy men ; be 
thought Job " a great epic poem," and quoted Habbakuk 
by rote ; — that he knew many hymns by heart; attended 
what is called " divine service ; " agreed with a New Hamp- 
shire divine " in all the doctrines of a Christian life ; " and, 
in the " Girard case," praised the popular theology, with the 
ministers thereof, — the latter as "appointed by the Author 
of the Christian religion himself." • 

He seems by nature to have had a religious turn of mind ; 
was full of devout and reverential feelings; took a deep 
delight in religious emotions ; was fond of religious books 
of a sentimental cast ; loved Watts's tender and delicious 
hymns, with the devotional parts of the Bible ; his memory 
was. stored with the poetry of hymn-books ; he was fond of 
attendance at church. He had no particle of religious 
bigotry ; joining an Orthodox Church at Boscawen, an 
Episcopal at Washington, a Unitarian at Boston, and attend- 
ing religious services without much regard for the theology 
of the minister. He loved religious forms, and could not 
see a child baptized Avithout dropping a tear. Psalms and 
hymns also brought the woman into those great eyes. He 
was never known to swear, or use any profanity of speech. 
Considering the habits of his political company, that is a fact 
worth notice. But I do not find that his religious emotions 
had any influence on his latter life, either public or private. 
He read religion out of politics with haughty scorn, — " It 
makes men mad " ! It appeared neither to check him from ill, 
nor urge to good: though he loved "to have religion made 
a personal matter," he forsook the church which made it per- 
sonal in the form of temperance. His " religious character " 
was what the churches tend to form, and love to praise. 



80 

II. Of the affections he was well provided by nature, 
though they were little cultivated, — attachable to a few 
who knew him, and loved him tenderly ; and, if he hated 
like a giant, he loved also like a king. 

He had small respect for the mass of men, — a contempt 
for the judgment and the feelings of the millions who make 
up the people. Many women loved him ; some from pure 
affection, others fascinated and overborne by the immense 
masculineness of the man. Some are still left who knew 
him in early life, before political ambition set its mark on his 
forehead, and drove him forth into the world : they love him 
with the tenderest of woman's affection. This is no small 
praise. In his earlier life he was fond of children, loved their 
prattle and their play. They, too, were fond of him, came 
to him as dust of iron to a loadstone, climbed on his back, 
or, when he lay down, lay on his limbs and also slept. 

Of unimpassioned and unrelated love, there are two modes, 
— friendship for a few ; philanthropy for all. Friendship 
he surely had, especially in earlier life. All along the shore, 
men loved him; men in Boston loved him to the last; 
Washington held loving hearts which worshipped him. But, 
of late years, he turned round to smite and crush his early 
friends who kept the higher law ; ambition tore the friendship 
out of him, and he became unkind and cruel. The com- 
panions of his later years were chiefly low men, with large 
animal appetites, servants of his body's baser parts, or tide- 
Avaiters of his ambition, — vulgar men in Boston and New 
York, who bask in the habitations of cruelty, whereof the 
dark places of the earth are full, seeking to enslave their 
brother-men. These barnacles clove to the great man's 
unprotected parts, and hastened his decay. When kidnap- 
pers made their loathsome lair of his bosom, what was his 
friendship worth ? 

Of philanthropy, I claim not much for him. The noble 
plea for Greece is the most I can put in for argument. He 



81 



cared little for the poor; charity seldom invaded his open 
purse; he trod down the poorest and most friendless of 
perishing men. His name was never connected with the 
humanities of the age. Soon as the American Government 
seemed fixed on the side of cruelty, he marched all his 
dreadful artillery over, and levelled his breaching cannons 
against men ready to perish without his shot. In later 
years, his face was the visage of a tyrant. 

III. Of conscience it seemed to me he had little ; in 
his later life, exceeding little : his moral sense seemed long 
besotted ; almost, though not wholly, gone. Hence, though 
he was often generous, he was not just. Free to give as to 
grasp, he was lavish by instinct, not charitable on principle. 

He had little courage, and rarely spoke a Northern word 
to a Southern audience, save his official words in Congress. 
In Charleston he was the " schoolmaster that gives us no 
lessons." He quailed before the Southern men who would 
" dissolve the Union," when he stood before their eye. 
They were " high-minded and chivalrous: " it was only the 
non-resistants of the North he meant to ban ! 

He was indeed eminently selfish, joining the instinctive 
egotism of passion with the self-conscious, voluntary, de- 
liberate, calculating egotism of ambition. He borrowed 
money of rich young men — ay, and of poor ones — in the 
generosity of their youth, and never paid. He sought to 
make his colleagues in office the tools of his ambition, and, 
that failing, pursued them with the intensest hate. Thus he 
sought to ruin the venerable John Quincy Adams, when the 
President became a Representative. By secret hands he 
scattered circulars in Mr. Adams's district to work his over- 
throw ; got other men to oppose him. With different men he 
succeeded better. He used his party as he used his friends, 
— as tools. He coquetted with the Democrats in M2, with 
the Free Soilcrs in '48; but, the suit miscarrying, turned to 
the Slave Power in '50, and negotiated an espousal which 
12 



82 



was cruelly broke off in '52. Men, parties, the law,* and the 
nation, he did not hesitate to sacrifice to the colossal selfish- 
ness of his egotistic ambition. 

His strength lay not in the religious, nor in the affectional, 
nor in the moral part of man. 

IV. But his intellect was immense. His power of com- 
prehension was vast. He methodized swiftly. If you look 
at the forms of intellectual action, you may distribute them 
into three great modes ; the Understanding, the Imagi- 
nation, and the Reason ; — the Understanding dealing with 
details and methods, the practical power ; Imagination, With 
beauty, the power to create ; Reason, with first principles 
and universal laws, the philosophic power. 

We must deny to Mr. Webster the great Reason. He 
does not belong at all to the chief men of that department, 
— with Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Leibnitz, Newton, Des 
Cartes, and the other mighties. Nay, he has no place with 
humbler men of reason, with common philosophers ; he had 
no philosophical system of politics, few philosophical ideas of 
politics, whereof to make a system. He seldom grasps a 
universal law. His measures of expediency for to-day are 
seldom bottomed on universal principles of right, which last 
for ever. 

I cannot assign to him large Imagination. He was not 
creative of new forms of thought or of beauty ; so he lacks 
the poetic charm which gladdens the loftiest eloquence. 

But his Understanding was exceedingly great. He ac- 
quired readily and retained well ; arranged with ease and 
skill, and fluently reproduced. As a scholar, he passed for 
learned in the American Senate, where scholars are few ; for 
a universal man, with editors of political and commercial 
prints. But his learning was narrow in its range, and not 
very nice in its accuracy. His reach in history and litera- 
ture was very small for a man seventy years of age, always 

* Leges invalids prius ; imo nocere coactae. 



83 



associating with able men. To science he seems to have 
paid scarce any attention at all. It is a short radius that 
measures the arc of his historic realm. A few Latin au- 
thors, whom he loved to quote, made up his meagre classic 
store. He was not a scholar, and it is idle to claim great 
scholarship for him. Compare him with the promim-nt 
statesmen of Europe, or with the popular orators of Eng- 
land, you see continually the narrow range of his culture. 

As a statesman, his lack of what I call the higher Reason 
and Imagination continually appears. He invented nothing. 
To the national stock he added no new idea, created out 
of new thought ; no new maxim, formed by induction out of 
human history and old thought. The great ideas of the time 
were not borne in his bosom. 

He organized nothing. There were great ideas of im- 
mense practical value seeking lodgment in a body : he aided 
them not. None of the great measures of our time were 
his — not one of them. His best bill was the Specie Bill of 
1815, which caused payments to be made in national cur- 
rency. 

His lack of conscience is painfully evident. As Secretary 
of State, he did not administer eminently well. When Sec- 
retary of State under Mr. Tyler, he knew how to be unjust 
to poor, maltreated Mexico. His letters in reply to the just 
complaints of Mr. Bocanegra, the Mexican Secretary of 
State, are painful to read : it is the old story of the Wolf and 
the Lamb.* 

The appointments made under his administration had bet- 
ter not be looked at too closely. The affairs of Cuba last 
year and this, the affairs of the Fisheries and the Lobos 
Islands, are little to his credit. 

* See these letters — to Mr. Thompson, Works, vol. vi. p. 445, et seq. ; 
and those of Mr. Bocanegra to Mr. Webster, p. 442, et seq. 457, et seq. How 
different is the tone of America to powerful England ! Whom men wrong 
they hate. 



84 



He was sometimes ignorant of the affairs he had to treat; 
he neglected the public business, — left grave matters all 
unattended to. Nay, he did worse. Early in August last, 
Mr. Lawrence had an interview with the British Foreign 
Secretary, in which explanations were made calculated to 
remove all anxiety as to the Fishery Question. He wrote 
a paper detailing the result of the interview. It was de- 
signed to be communicated to the American Senate. Mr. 
Lawrence sent it to Mr. Webster. It reached the Depart- 
ment at Washington on the 24th of August. But Mr. 
Webster did not communicate it to the Senate ; even the 
President knew nothing of its existence till after the Secre- 
tary's death. Now, it is not " compatible with the public 
interest to publish it," as its production would reveal the 
negligence of the Department. You remember the letter he 
published on his own account relating to the Fisheries ! No 
man, it was said, could get office under his administration, 
"unless bathed in negro's blood : " support of the Fugitive 
Slave Bill, " like the path of righteous devotion, led to a 
blessed preferment." 

Lacking both moral principle and intellectual ideas, politi- 
cal ethics and political economy, it must needs be that his 
course in politics was crooked. He opposed the Mexican 
war, but invested a son in it, and, praised the soldiers who 
fought in it, as surpassing our fathers who stood behind 
bulwarks on Bunker Hill ! He called on the nation to 
uphold the stars of America on the fields of Mexico, though 
he knew it was the stripes that they held up. Now he is for 
free trade, then for protection ; now for specie, then for 
bills ; first for a bank, then it is " an obsolete idea ; " now 
for freedom and against slavery, then for slavery and 
against freedom ; now Justice is the object of government, 
now Money. Now what makes men Christians makes them 
good citizens; next, religion is good "everywhere but in 
politics, — there it makes men mad." Now religion is the 



85 



only ground of government, and all conscience is to be 
respected ; next, there is no law higher than the act of Con- 
gress, and he hoots at conscience, and would not re-enact the 
law of God. 

He began his career as the friend of free trade and hard 
money ; he would restrict the government to the strait line of 
the Constitution rigidly defined ; he would resist the Bank, 
the protective tariff, the extension of slavery, they exceeded 
the limits of the Constitution ; he became the pensioned advo- 
cate of restricted trade and of paper money ; he interpreted 
the Constitution to oppress the several States and the citi- 
zens ; brought the force of the government against private 
right, and lent all his might to the extension of slavery. 
Once he stood out boldly for the right of all men " to can- 
vass public measures and the merits of public men ; " then 
he tells us that discussion "must be suppressed " ! Several 
years ago, he called a private meeting of the principal 
manufacturers of Boston, and advised them to abandon the 
protective tariff; but they would not, and so he defended it 
as warmly as ever ! His course was crooked as the Missouri. 
The Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel were, like him, 
without a philosophical scheme of political conduct, or any 
great ideas whereby to shape the future into fairer forms; 
but the principle of duty was the thread which joined all 
parts of their public ministration. Thereon each strung his 
victories. But selfish egotism is the only continuous thread 
I find thus running through the crooked life of the famous 
American. 

With such a lack of ideas and of honesty, with a dread of 
taking the responsibility in advance of public opinion, lack- 
ing confidence in the people, and confidence in himself, he 
did not readily understand the public opinion on which he 
depended. He thought himself "a favorite with the peo- 
ple," — "sure of election if nominated;" it was " only the 
politicians" who stood between him and the nation. He 



86 

thought the Fugitive Slave Bill would be popular in the 
North ; that it could be executed in Syracuse, and Massa- 
chusetts would conquer her prejudices with alacrity. So he 
had little value as a permanent guide : he changed often, but 
at the unlucky moment. 

He tacked and wore ship many a time in his life, always 
in bad weather, and never came round but he fell off from 
the popular wind. Perseverance makes the saints : he always 
forsook his idea just as that was about to make its fortune. 
In his voyaging for the Presidency, he was always too late 
for the tide; embarked on the ebb, and was left as the 
stream run dry. The Fugitive Slave Law has done the 
South no good, save to reveal the secrets of her prison-house, 
the cabin of Uncle Tom, and make the North hate slavery 
with a tenfold hate. So far as he " Websterized " the Whig 
party, he has done so to its ruin. 

He was a great advocate, a great orator ; it is said, the 
greatest in the land, — and I do not doubt that this was true. 
Surely he was immensely great. When he spoke, he was a 
grand spectacle. His noble form, so dignified and masculine ; 
his massive head ; the mighty brow, Olympian in its majesty ; 
the great, deep, dark eye, which, like a lion's, seemed fixed 
on objects far off, looking beyond what lay in easy range ; 
the mouth so full of strength and determination, — these all 
became the instruments of such eloquence as few men ever 
hear. He magnetized men by his presence; he subdued 
them by his will more than by his argument. Many have 
surpassed him in written words ; for he could not embody 
the sunshine in such flowers of thought as Burke, Milton, 
and Cicero wrought into mosaic oratory. But, since the 
great Athenians, Demosthenes and Pericles, who ever thun- 
dered out such spoken eloquence as he ? 

Yet he has left no perfect specimen of a great oration. He 
had not the instinctive genius which creates a beautiful whole 
by nature, as a mother bears a living son ; nor the wide 



87 



knowledge, the deep philosophy, the plastic industry, which 
forms a beautiful whole by art, as a sculptor chisels a marble 
boy. So his greatest and most deliberate efforts of oratory 
will not bear comparison with the great eloquence of nature 
that is born, nor the great eloquence of art that is made. 
Compared therewith, his mighty works are as Hercules com- 
pared with Apollo. It is an old world, and excellence in 
oratory is difficult ; yet he has sentences and paragraphs that 
I think unsurpassed and unequalled, and I do not see how 
they can ever fade. He w r as not a Nile of eloquence, 
cascading into poetic beauty now, then watering whole pro- 
vinces with the drainage of tropic mountains : he was a 
Niagara, pouring a world of clear waters adown a single 
ledge. 

His style was simple, the business-style of a strong man. 
Now and then it swelled into beauty, though it was often 
dull. In later years, he seldom touched the conscience, 
the affections, or the soul, except, alas ! to smite our sense 
of justice, our philanthropy, and trust in God. He always 
addressed the understanding, not the reason, — Calhoun did 
that the more, — not the imagination : in his speech there 
was little wit, little beauty, little poetry. He laid siege to 
the understanding. Here lay his strength — he could make 
a statement better than any man in America ; had immense 
power of argumentation, building a causeway from his will 
to the hearer's mind. He was skilful in devising " middle 
terms," in making steps whereby to lead the audience to his 
determination. No man managed the elements of his argu- 
ment with more practical effect. 

Perhaps he did this better when contending for a wrong, 
than when battling for the right. His most ingenious argu- 
ments are pleas for injustice.* Part of the effect came from 
the physical bulk of the man ; part from the bulk of will, 

* See examples of this in the Creole letter, and that to Mr. Thompson 
(Works, vol. vi.), and in many a speech. 



88 



which marked all his speech, and writing too ; but much 
from his power of statement. He gathered a great mass of 
material, bound it together, swung it about his head, fixed 
his eye on the mark, then let the ruin fly. If you want a 
word suddenly shot from Dover to Calais, you send it by 
lightning ; if a ball of a ton weight, you get a steam-cannon 
to pitch it across. Webster was the steam-gun of eloquence. 
He hit the mark less by gunnery than strength. His shot 
seemed big as his target. * 

There is a great difference in the weapons which speakers 
use. This orator brings down his quarry with a single subtle 
shot, of sixty to the pound. He carries death without 
weight in his gun, as sure as fate. 

Here is another, the tin-pedlar of American speech. He 
is a snake in the grass, slippery, shining, with a baleful crest 
on his head, cunning in his crazy eye, and the poison of the 
old serpent in his heart, and on his slimy jaw, and about the 
fans at the bottom of his smooth and forked and nimble 
tongue. He conquers by bewitching ; he fascinates his 
game to death. 

Commonly, Mr. Webster was open and honest in his ora- 
tory. He had no masked batteries, no Quaker guns. He 
had " that rapid and vehement declamation which fixes the 
hearer's attention on the subject, making the speaker forgot- 
ten, and leaving his art concealed." He wheeled his forces 
into line, column after column, with the quickness of Han- 
nibal and the masterly arrangement of Cflesar, and, like 
Napoleon, broke the centre of his opponent's line by the 
superior weight of his own column and the sudden heaviness 
of his fire. Thus he laid siege to the understanding, and 
carried it by dint of cannonade. This was his strategy, 

* "Tu quoque, Piso, 
Judicis affectum, posscssaque pectora ducis 
Victor ; sponte sua sequitur, quocunque vocasti : 
Et to dante capit judex, quam non habet iram." 



89 



in the court-house, in the senate, and in the public hall. 
There were no ambuscades, no pitfalls, or treacherous In- 
dian subtlety. It was the tactics of a great and naturally 
honest-minded man. 

In his oratory there was but one trick, — the trick of self- 
depreciation. That came on him in his later years, and it 
always failed. He was too big to make any one believe he 
thought himself little; so obviously proud, we knew he 
valued his services high when he rated them so low. That 
comprehensive eye could not overlook so great an ohject 
as himself. He was not organized to cheat, to deceive ; and 
did not prosper when he tried. 'Tis ill the lion apes the 
fox. 

He was ambitious. Cardinal Wolsey's " unbounded 
stomach " was also the stomach of Webster. Yet his ambi- 
tion mostly failed. In forty years of public life, he rose no 
higher than Secretary of State ; and held that post but five 
years. He was continually out-generalled by subtler men. 
He had little political foresight: for he had not the all- 
conquering Religion which meekly executes the Law of 
God, all fearless of its consequence; nor yet the wide 
Philanthropy, the deep sympathy with all that is human, 
which gives a man the public heart, and so the control of 
the issues of life, which thence proceed ; nor the great Justice 
which sees the everlasting right, and journeys thitherward 
through good or ill; nor the mighty Reason, which, reflect- 
ing, beholds the principles of human nature, the constant 
mode of operation of the forces of God in the forms of men ; 
nor the poetic Imagination, which in its political sphere 
creates great schemes of law; and hence he was not popu- 
lar. 

He longed for the Presidency ; but Harrison kept him 
from the nomination in '40, Clay in '44, Taylor in '48, and 
Scott in '52. He never had a wide and original in Hue nee 
in the politics of the nation ; for he had no elemental than- 

13 



90 



der of his own — the Tariff was Mr. Calhoun's at first; 
the Force Bill was from another hand ; the Fugitive Slave 
Bill was Mr. Mason's ; " the Omnibus " had many fathers, 
whereof Webster was not one. He was not a blood-relation 
to any of the great measures, — to free-trade or protec- 
tion, to paper money or hard coin, to freedom or slavery ; he 
was of their kindred only by adoption. He has been on all 
sides of most questions, save on the winning side. 

In the case of the Fugitive Slave Law, he stood betwixt 
the living and the dead, and blessed the plague. But, even 
here, he faltered when he came North again, — " The South 
will get no concessions from me." Mr. Webster com- 
mended the first draught of the Fugitive Slave Bill, with 
Mr. Mason's amendments thereto, volunteering his support 
thereof "to the fullest extent." But he afterwards and 
repeatedly declared, " The Fugitive Slave Bill was not such 
a measure as I had prepared before I left the Senate, and 
which I should have supported if I had remained in the 
Senate."* "I was of opinion," said he, "that a summary 
trial by jury might be had, which would satisfy the preju- 
dices of the people, and produce no harm to those who 
claimed the services of fugitives." f Nay, he went so far 
as to introduce a bill to the Senate providing a trial by 
jury for all fugitives claiming a trial for their freedom. ^ He 
thought the whole business of delivering up such as owed 
service or labor, belonged to the State whither the fugitive 
fled, and not to the general government. § Of course he 
must have considered it constitutional and expedient to 
secure for the fugitive a trial before an impartial jury of 
" twelve good and lawful men," who should pass upon the 



* Mr. Webster's letter to the Union Committee. Works, vol. vi. p. 578, 
et al. 

t Speech at Syracuse (New York, 1851), p. 17. 
X See it in Works, vol. v. p. 373-4 
§ Ibid. p. 354. 



91 



whole matter at issue. But, with that conviction, and with 
that bill ready drafted, as he says, in hi.s desk, he could 
volunteer his support to a bill which took away from the 
States all jurisdiction in the matter, and from the fugitive all 
"due process of law," all trial by jury, and left him in the 
hands of a creature of the court, who was to be paid twice 
as much for enslaving his victim as for acquitting a man ! 
He had almost no self-reliant independence of character. 
It was his surroundings, not his will, that shaped his course, 
— " driven by the wind and tossed." 

Mr. Webster's political career began with generous pro- 
mise. He contended for the rights of the people against the 
government, of the minority against the majority; he defended 
the right of each man to discuss all public measures, and trie 
conduct of public men ; he wished commerce to be unre- 
stricted, payments to be made in hard coin. He spoke noble 
Avords against oppression, — the despotism of the " Holy 
Alliance " in Europe, the cruelty of the Slave Trade in 
America. Generously and nobly he contended against the 
extension of slavery beyond the Mississippi. Not philan- 
thropic by instinct or moral principle, averse to democratic 
institutions both by nature and conviction, he yet, by instinct- 
ive generosity, hated tyranny, hated injustice, hated despot- 
ism. He appealed to moral power against physical force. 
He sympathized with the republics of South America. His 
great powers taking such a direction certainly promised a 
brilliant future, large services for mankind. But, alas ! he 
fell on evil times : who ever fell on any other ? He was 
intensely ambitious; not ambitious to serve mankind, but to 
hold office, have power and fame. Is this the " last infirmity 
of noble mind " ? It was not a very noble object he proposed 
as the end of his life ; the means to it became successively 
more and more unworthy. " Ye cannot serve God and 
mammon." 

For some years, no large body of men has had much 



92 



trust in him, — admiration, but not confidence. In Massa- 
chusetts, off the pavements, for the last three years, he has 
had but little power. After the speech of March 7, he 
said, "I will be maintained in Massachusetts." Massachu- 
setts said No ! Only in the cities that bought him was he 
omnipotent. Even the South would not trust him. Gen. 
Jackson was the most popular man of our time. Calhoun 
was popular throughout the South ; Clay, in all quarters of 
the land; and, at this day, Seward wields the forces of the 
"Whigs. With all his talent, Webster never had the influ- 
ence on America of the least of these. 

Yet Daniel Webster had many popular qualities. He 
loved out-door and manly sports, — boating, fishing, fowl- 
ing. He was fond of nature, loving New Hampshire's 
mountain scenery. He had started small and poor, had 
risen great and high, and honorably had fought his way 
alone. He rose early in the morning. He loved gardening, 
"the purest of human pleasures." He was a farmer, and 
took a countryman's delight in country things, — in loads of 
hay, in trees, in turnips and the noble Indian corn, in mon- 
strous swine. He had a patriarch's love of sheep, — choice 
breeds thereof he had. He took delight in cows, — short 
horned Durhams, Here fordsh ires, Ayrshires, Alderneys. 
He tilled paternal acres with his own oxen. He loved to 
give the kine fodder. It was pleasant to hear his talk of 
oxen. And but three days before he left the earth, too ill to 
visit them, his cattle, lowing, came to see their sick lord ; and, 
as he stood in his door, his great oxen were driven up, that 
he might smell their healthy breath, and look his last on 
those broad, generous faces, that were never false to him. 

He loved birds, and would not have them shot on his 
premises ; and so his farm twittered all over with their " sweet 
jargonings." Though in public his dress was more uni- 
formly new than is common with acknowledged gentlemen, 
at home and on his estate he wore his old and homely 



93 



clothes, and had kind words for all, and hospitality besides. 
He loved his father and brother with great tenderness, which 
easily broke into tears when he spoke of them. He was 
kind to his obscurer and poor relations. He had no money 
to bestow ; they could not share his intellect, or the renown it 
gave. But he gave them his affection, and they loved him 
with veneration. He was a friendly man : all along the 
shore there were plain men that loved him, — whom he also 
loved ; " a good neighbor, a good townsman : " 

" Lofty and sour to those that loved him not ; 
But to those men that sought him, sweet as summer." 

His influence on the development of America has not been 
great. He had large gifts, large opportunities also for their 
use, — the two greatest things which great men ask. Yet he 
has brought little to pass. No great ideas, no great organi- 
zations, will bind him to the coming age. His life has been 
a long vacillation. Ere long, men will ask for the historic 
proof to verify the reputation of his power. It will not 
appear. For the present, his career is a failure : he was 
balked of his aim. How will it be for the future ? Posterity 
will vainly ask for proof of his intellectual power, to invent, 
to organize, to administer. The historian must write that he 
aimed to increase the executive power, the central govern- 
ment, and to weaken the local power of the States; that he 
preferred the Federal authority to State rights, the judiciary 
to the legislature, the government to the people, the claims 
of money to the rights of man. Calhoun will stand as the 
representative of State rights and free trade ; Clay, of the 
American system of protection ; Benton, of payment in sound 
coin ; some other, of the revenue tariff. And in the greatest 
question of the age, the question of Human Rights, as 
champions of mankind, there will appear Adams, Giddings, 
Chase, Palfrey, Mann, Hale, Rantoul, and Sumner ; yes, one 



94 

other name, which on the historian's page will shade all 
these, — the name of Garrison. Men will recount the 
words of Webster at Plymouth Rock, at Bunker Hill, at 
Faneuil Hall, at Niblo's Garden ; they will also recollect 
that he declared "protection of property" to be the great 
domestic object of government; that he said, " Liberty first 
and Union afterwards" was delusion and folly;" that he 
called on Massachusetts to conquer her "prejudices" in 
favor of unalienable right, and with alacrity give up a man 
to be a slave ; turned all the North into a hunting-field for 
the blood-hound ; that he made the negation of God the first 
principle of government; that our New England elephant 
turned round, tore Freedom's standard down, and trod her 
armies under foot. They will see that he did not settle the 
greatest questions by Justice and the Law of God. His 
parallel lines of power are indeed long lines, — a nation 
reads his word : they are not far apart, you cannot get many 
centuries between ; for there are no great ideas of Right, no 
mighty acts of Love, to keep them wide. 

There are brave words which Mr. Webster has spoken 
that will last while English is a speech; yea, will journey 
with the Anglo-Saxon race, and one day be classic in either 
hemisphere, in every zone. But what will posterity say of 
his efforts to chain the fugitive, to extend the area of human 
bondage ; of his haughty scorn of any law higher than what 
trading politicians enact in the Capitol ? " There is a law 
above all the enactments of human codes, the same through- 
out the world, the same in all time ; " " it is the law written 
by the finger of God upon the heart of man ; and by that 
law, unchangeable and eternal, while men despise fraud, 
and loathe rapine, and abhor blood, they will reject with 
indignation the wild and guilty fantasy that man can hold 
property in man." * 

* Lord Brougham's speech on Negro Slavery, in the House of Commons, 
July 13, 1830. 



95 



Calhoun, Clay, Webster — they were all able men, — 
long in politics, all ambitious, grasping at the Presidency > 
all failing of what they sought. All three called themselves 
" Democrats," taking their stand on the unalienable rights of 
man. But all three conjoined to keep every sixth man in 
the nation a chattel slave; all three at last united in deadly 
war against the unalienable rights of men whom swarthy 
mothers bore. O democratic America ! 

Was Mr. Webster's private life good ? There are many 
depraved things done without depravity of heart. I am here 
to chronicle, and not invent. I cannot praise a man for 
virtues that he did not have. This day, such praise sounds 
empty and impertinent as the chattering of a caged canary 
amid the sadness of a funeral prayer. Spite of womanly 
tenderness, it is not for me to renounce my manhood and my 
God. I shall 

" Naught extenuate and nothing add, 
Nor set down aught in malice." 

Before he left New Hampshire, I find no stain upon, his 
conduct there, save recklessness of expense. But in Boston, 
when he removed here, there were men in vogue worse than 
any since as conspicuous, — open debauchees. He fell in 
with them, and became over-fond of animal delights, of the 
joys of the body's baser parts; fond of sensual luxury, the 
victim of low appetites. He loved power, loved pleasure, 
loved wine. Let me turn off my face, and say no more of 
this sad theme : others were as bad as he.* 

He was intensely proud. Careless of money, he was 
often in trouble on its account. He contracted debts, and 
did not settle ; borrowed of rich and poor, and young and 
old, and rendered not again. Private money often clove 

* Hoc sat viator : reliqua non sinit pudor ; 
Tu suspieare et ambula. 



96 

to his hands ; yet in his nature there was no taint of avarice. 
He lavished money on luxuries, while his washerwoman was 
left unpaid ; few Americans have spent so much as he. Rapa- 
cious to get, he was prodigal of his own. I wish the charges 
brought against his public administration may be disproved, 
whereof the stain rests on him to this day. When he en- 
tered on a lawyer's life, Mr. Gore advised him, " Whatever 
bread you eat, let it be the bread of independence ! " Oh 
that the great mind could have kept that counsel ! But, even 
at Portsmouth, luxury brought debt, and many an evil on its 
back. He collected money, and did not pay! "Bread of 
independence," when did he eat it last? Rich men paid his 
debts of money when he came to Massachusetts ; they took 
a dead-pledge on the man ; only death redeemed that mort- 
gage. In 1827 he solicited the Senatorship of Massachu- 
setts ; it ." would put down the calumnies of Isaac Hill"! 
He obtained the office, not without management. Then he 
refused to take his seat until ten thousand dollars was raised 
for him. The money came clandestinely, and he went into 
the Senate — a pensioner! His reputation demanded a 
speech against the tariff of '28 ; his pension required his 
vote for that " bill of abominations." He spoke one way, 
and voted the opposite. Was that the first dotation ? He 
was forestalled before he left New Hampshire. The next 
gift was twenty thousand, it is said. Then the sums in- 
creased. What great "gifts" have been privately raised 
for him by contributions, subscriptions, donations, and the 
like ! Is it honest to buy up a man ? honest for a man to sell 
himself? Is it just for a judge who administers the law to 
take a secret bribe of a party at his court ? Is it just for a 
party to offer such gifts ? Answer Lord Bacon who tried 
it ; answer Thomas More who tried it not. It is worse for 
a Maker of laws to be bought and sold. New England 
men, I hope not meaning wrong, bought the great senator in 
'27, and long held him in their pay. They gave him all his 



97 



services were worth, — gave more. His commercial and 
financial policy has been the bane of New England and the 
North. In 1850 the South bought him, but never paid ! * 

A Senator of the United States, he was pensioned by 
the capitalists of Boston. Their "gifts" in his hand, how 
could he dare be just! His later speeches smell of bribes. 
Could not Francis Bacon warn him, nor either Adams 
guide ? Three or four hundred years ago, Thomas More, 
when " under Sheriff of London," would not accept a pen- 
sion from the king, lest it might swerve him from his duty to 
the town ; when chancellor, he would not accept five thou- 
sand pounds which the English clergy publicly offered him, 
for public service done as chancellor. But Webster in 
private took — how much I cannot tell! Considering all 
things, his buyers' wealth and his unthriftiness, it was as 
dishonorable in them to bribe, as in him to take their gift ! 

To gain his point, alas ! he sometimes treated facts, law, 
constitution, morality and religion, as an advocate treats 
matters at the bar. Was he certain South Carolina had no 
constitutional right to nullify ? I make no doubt he felt so ; 
but in his language he is just as strong when he declares the 
Fugitive Slave Bill is perfectly constitutional ; that slavery 
cannot be in California and New Mexico ; just as confident 
in his dreadful mock at conscience, and the dear God's un- 
changing law. He heeded not " the delegated voice of God " 
which speaks in the conscience of the faithful man. 

No living man has done so much to debauch the con- 

science of the nation ; to debauch the press, the pulpit, the 

, forum, and the bar ! There is no higher law, quoth he ; and 

how much of the pulpit, the press, the forum, and the bar, 

* " Sed lateri nullus comitem circumdare quEerit, 

Quern dat purus amor, scd quom tulit impia merces, 
Nee quisquara vero pretium largitur amico, 
Quem regat ex aequo, vicibusque regatur ab illo : 
Sed miserum parva stipe munerat, ut pudibundos 
Exercere sales inter consilia possit." 
14 



98 

denies its God ! Read the journals of the last week for proof 
of what I say ; and read our history since March of '50. 
He poisoned the moral wells of society with his lower law, 
and men's consciences died of the murrain of beasts, which 
came because they drank thereat. 

In an age which prizes money as the greatest good, and 
counts the understanding as the highest human faculty, the 
man who is to lead and bless the world must indeed be 
great in intellect, but also great in conscience, greater in 
affection, and greatest of all things in his soul. In his later 
years, Webster was intellect, and little more. If he did not 
regard the eternal Right, how could he guide a nation to 
what is useful for to-day ? If he scorned the law of God, 
how could he bless the world of men? It was by this 
fault he fell. " Those who murdered Banquo, what did they 
win by it ? " 

■ " A barren sceptre in their gripe, 



Thence to be wrenched with an unlineal hand, 
No son of theirs succeeding." 

He knew the cause of his defeat, and in the last weeks of 
his life confessed that he was deceived ; that, before his fatal 
speech, he had assurance from the North and South, that, if 
he supported slavery, it would lead him into place and 
power ; but now he saw the mistake, and that a few of the 
"fanatics" had more influence in America than he and all 
the South ! He sinned against his own conscience, and so 
he fell? 

He made him wings of slavery to gain a lofty eminence. 
Those wings unfeathered in his flight. For one and thirty 
months he fell, until at last he reached the tomb. There, 
on the sullen shore, a mighty wreck, great Webster lies. 

" Is this the man in Freedom's cause'approved, 
The man so great, so honored, so beloved? 
Where is the heartfelt worth and weight of soul, 
Which labor could not stoop, nor fear control ? 



99 



Where the known dignity, the stamp of awe, 
Which, half abashed, the proud and venal saw ? 
"Where the calm triumphs of an honest cause ? — 
Where the delightful taste of just applause- 

Oh, lost alike to action and repose, 

Unwept, unpitied in the worst of woes ; 

With all that conscious, undissembled pride, 

Sold to the insults of a foe defied ; 

With all that habit of familiar fame, 

Doomed to exhaust the dregs of life in shame ! " 

Oh, what a warning was his fall ! 

" To dash corruption in her proud career, 
And teach her slaves that vice was born to fear." 

" Oh dumb be passion's stormy rage, 
When he who might 
Have lighted up and led his age 
Falls back in night." 

Had he been faithful to his own best words, so oft repeat- 
ed, how he would have stood ! How different would have 
been the aspect of the North and the South ; of the press, 
the pulpit, the forum, and the court ! 

Had he died after the treaty of 1842, how different would 
have been his fame ! 

Since the Revolution, no American has had so noble an 
opportunity as Mr. Webster to speak a word for the advance- 
ment of mankind. There was a great occasion: slavery 
was clamorous for new power, new territory; was invading 
the State Rights of the North. Earnest men in the North, 
getting aroused and hostile to slavery, were looking round 
for some able man to take the political guidance of the anti- 
slavery feeling, to check the great national crime, and help 
end it ; they were asking — 

" Who is the honest man, — 
He that doth still and strongly good pursue, 
To God, his neighbor, and himself, most true ; 

Whom neither fear nor fawning can 
Unpin, or wrench from giving all their due i" 



100 

Some circumstances seemed to point to Mr. Webster as the 
man ; his immense oratorical abilities, his long acquaintance 
with public affairs, his conspicuous position, his noble words 
in behalf of freedom, beginning with his college days and 
extending over many a year, — all these were powerful 
arguments in his behalf. The people had always been indul- 
gent to his faults, allowing him a wide margin of public and 
private oscillation ; the North was ready to sustain him in all 
generous efforts for the unalienable rights of man. But he 
threw away the great moment of his life, used all his abilities 
to destrov those rights of man, and builded the materials of 
honorable fame into a monument of infamy for the warning 
of mankind. Declaring that "the protection of property" 
was "the great object of government," he sought to unite 
the Money power of the North and the Slave power of the 
South into one great instrument to stifle discussion, and with- 
stand religion, and the Higher Law of God. 

Had he lived and labored for freedom as for slavery, — 
nay, with half the diligence and half the power, — to-mor- 
row, all the North would rise to make him their President, 
and put on that Olympian brow the wreath of honor from 
a people's hand. Then he would have left a name like 
Adams, Jefferson, and Washington ; and the tears of every 
good man would have dropped upon his tomb ! Had he 
served his God with half the zeal that he served the South, 
He would not, in his age, have left him naked to his enemies ! 
If Mr. Webster had cultivated the moral, the affectional, 
the religious part of his nature Avith half the diligence he 
nursed his power of speech, what a man there would have 
been ! With his great ability as an advocate, with his elo- 
quence, his magnetic power, in his position, — a Senator for 
twenty years, — if he could have attained the justice, the 
philanthropy, the religion of Channing or of Follen, or of 
many a modest woman in all the Christian sects, what a 
noble spectacle should we have seen ! Then the nation 



101 



would long since have made him President, and he also 
would have revolutionized men's ideas of political great- 
ness ; "the bigot would have ceased to persecute, the des- 
pot to vex, the desolate poor to sulTer, the slave to groan and 
tremble, the ignorant to commit crimes, and the ill-contrived 
law to engender criminality." 

But he did not fall all at once. No man ever does. Apos- 
tasy is not a sudden sin. Little by little he came to the 
ground. Long leaning, he leaned over and fell down. This 
was his great error — he sold himself to the money power 
to do service against mankind. The form of service became 
continually worse. Was he conscious of this corruption ? — 
at first ? But shall he bear the blame alone ? Oh, no ! Part 
of it belongs to this city, which corrupted him, tempted him 
with a price, bought him with its gold ! Daniel Webster 
had not thrift. " Poor Richard" was no saint of his. He 
loved luxury, and was careless of wealth. Boston caught 
him by the purse ; by that she led him to his mortal doom. 
With her much fair speech she caused him to yield ; with 
the flattery of her lips she deceived him. Boston Avas the 
Delilah that allured him ; but oft he broke the withes of 
gold, until at last, with a pension, she shore off the seven 
locks of his head, his strength went from him, and the Phi- 
listines took him and put out his eyes, brought him down to 
Washington, and bound him with fetters of brass. And he 
did grind in their prison-house; and they said, "Our God, 
which is slavery, hath delivered into our hands our enemy, 
the destroyer of our institutions, who slew many of us." 
Then, having used him for their need, they thrust the man 
away, deceived and broken-hearted ! 

No man can resist infinite temptation. There came a 
peril greater than he could bear. Condemn the sin — pity 
the offending man. The tone of political morality is pitia- 
bly low. It lowered him, and then he debased the morals 
of politics. 



102 



Part of the blame belongs to the New England church, 
which honors " devoutness," and sneers at every noble, manly 
life, calling men saints who only pray, all careless of the 
dead men's bones which glut the whited sepulchre. The 
churches of New England were waiting to proclaim slavery, 
and renounce the law of God. His is not all the blame. 
We must blame Mr. Webster as we blame few men. 
Society takes swift vengeance on the petty thief, the small 
swindler, and rogues in rags : the gallows kills the murderer. 
But for men in high office, with great abilities, who enact 
iniquity into law ; who enslave thousands, and sow a conti- 
nent with thraldom, to bear want and shame and misery and 
sin ; who teach as political ethics the theory of crime, — for 
them there is often no earthly outward punishment, but the 
indignation with which mankind scourges the memory of the 
oppressor. From the judgment of men, the appeal lies to 
the judgment of God: He only knows who sins, and how 
much. How much Mr. Webster is to be pitied, we know 
right well. Had he been a clergyman, as once he wished, 
he might have passed through life with none of the outward 
blemishes which now deform his memory ; famed for his gifts 
and .graces too, for eloquence, and " soundness in the faith," 
11 his praise in all the churches." Had he been a politician 
in a better age, — when it is not thought just for capitalists 
o buy up statesmen in secret, for politicians clandestinely to 
sell their services for private gold, or for clergymen, in the 
name of God, to sanctify all popular crimes, — he might have 
lifted up that noble voice continually for Truth and Right. 
Who could not in such a time ? The straw blows with the 
wind. But,.alas ! he was not firm enough for his place ; too 
W( ak in conscience to be the champion of justice while she 
needs a champion. Let us be just against the wrong he 
wrought, charitable to the man who wrought the wrong. 
Conscience compels our formidable blame ; the affections 
weep their pity too. 



103 



Like Bacon, whom Mr. Webster resembles in many thini:-. 
save industry and the philosophic mind, he had "no moral 
courage, no power of self-sacrifice or self-denial ; " with 
strong passions, with love of luxury in all its forms, with 
much pride, great fondness of applause, and the intensest 
love of power ; coming to Boston poor, a lawyer, without 
thrift, embarking in politics with such companions for his 
private and his public life, with such public opinion in the 
State, — that honesty is to serve the present purposes of your 
party, or the wealthy men who control it; in the Church, — 
that religion consists in belief without evidence, in ritual sacra- 
ments, in verbal prayer, — is it wonderful that this great in- 
tellect went astray ? See how corrupt the churches are, — 
the leading clergy of America are the anointed defenders of 
man-stealing; see how corrupt is the State, betraying the red 
men, enslaving the black, pillaging Mexico ; see how corrupt 
is trade, which rules the State and Church, dealing in men. 
Connecticut makes whips for the negro-driver. New Hamp- 
shire rears the negro-drivers themselves. Ships of Maine 
and Rhode Island are in the domestic slave-trade. The 
millionaires of Massachusetts own men in Virginia, Alabama, 
Missouri ! The leading men in Trade, in Church and State, 
think justice is not much more needed in a statesman than 
it is needed in an ox, or in the steel which shoes his hoof! 
Remember these things, and pity Daniel Webster, ambitious, 
passionate, unthrifty; and see the circumstances which 
weighed him down. We judge the deeds: God only can 
judge the man. If you and I have not met the temptation 
which can overmaster us, let us have mercy on such as come 
bleeding from that battle. 

His calling as a lawyer was somewhat dangerous, leading 
him " to make the worse appear the better reason ; " to seek 
"not verity, but verisimilitude ; " to look at the expedient end, 
not to inquire if his means be also just; to look too much at 
measures, not enough at principles. Yet his own brother 



104 



Ezekiel went safely through that peril, — no smell of that fire 
on his garment. 

His intercourse with politicians was full of moral peril. 
How few touch politics, and are thenceforward clean ! 

Boston now mourns for him ! She is too late in her weep- 
ing. She should have wept her warning when her capital- 
ists filled his right hand with bribes. She ought to have put 
on sackcloth when the speech of March 7th first came here. 
She should have hung her flags at half-mast when the Fugi- 
tive Slave Bill became a law ; then she only fired cannons, 
and thanked her representative. Webster fell prostrate, but 
was Boston more innocent than he ? Eemember the nine 
hundred and eisjhtv-seven men that thanked him for the 
speech which touched their " conscience," and pointed out 
the path of " duty " ! It was she that ruined him. 

She bribed him in 1827, and often since. He regarded 
the sums thus paid as a retaining fee, and at the last main- 
tained that the Boston manufacturers were still in his debt; 
for the services he had rendered them by defending the tariff 
in his place as Senator were worth more than all the money 
he received. Could a man be honest in such a position ? 
Alas that the great orator had not the conscience to remem- 
ber at first that man shall not live by bread alone ! 



What a sad life was his ! His wife died, — a loving wo- 
man, beautiful, and tenderly beloved ! Of several children, 
all save one have gone before him to the tomb. Sad man, 
he lived to build his children's monument ! Do you remem- 
ber the melancholy spectacle in the street, when Major Web- 
ster, a victim of the Mexican war, was by his father laid 
down in yonder tomb ? — a daughter, too, but recently laid 
low ! How poor seemed then the ghastly pageant in the 
street, empty and hollow as the muffled drum ! 

What a sad face he wore, — furrowed by passion, by am- 



105 

bition that noble brow scarred all over with the records of 
a hard, sad life. Look at the prints and pictures of him in 
the street. I do not wonder his early friends abhor the 
sio-ht. It is a face of sorrows. — private, public, secret woes. 
But there are pictures of that face in earlier years, full of 
power, but full of tenderness ; the mouth feminine, and inno- 
cent as a girl's. What a life of passion, of dark sorrow, 
rolled betwixt the two! In that ambition-stricken face 
his mother would not have known her child ! 

For years to me, he has seemed like one of the tragic 
heroes of the Grecian tale, pursued by fate ; and latterly, the 
saddest sight in all the Western World, — widowed of so 
much he loved, and grasping at what was not only vanity, 
but the saddest vexation of the heart. I have long mourned 
for him, as for no living or departed man. He blasted us 
with scornful lightning : him, if I could, I would not blast, 
but onlv bless continually and evermore. 

You remember the last time he spoke in Boston ; the pro- 
cession, last summer, you remember it well. What a 
and care-worn countenance was that of the old man, wel- 
comed with the mockery of applause! You remember, 
when the orator, wise-headed and friendly-hearted, came 
to thank him for his services, he said not a word of saving 
the Union ; of the compromise measures, not a word. That 
farce was played out — it was only the tragic facts that were 
left : but for his great services he thanked him. 

And when Webster replied, he said, " Here in Boston I 
am not disowned ; at least, here I am not disowned." X . 
Daniel Webster, \^ or e no t disowned in Boston. So long 
a* I have a tongue to teach, u u^^ to frel, you shall never 
be disowned. I must be just I must be tenucr fc~ ! 

It was partly bv Boston's sin that the great man fell ! 
I pin- his victims ; 'vou pity them, too. But I pity him more, 
oh far more ! Pitv the oppressed, will you ? Will you not 
also pity the oppressor in his sin ? Look there ! See that 

15 



106 



face, so manly strong, so maiden meek ! Hear that voice ! 
" Neither do I condemn thee ! Go, and sin no more ! " 
Listen to the last words of the Crucified : " Father, forgive 
them ; for they know not what they do." 

The last time he was in Faneuil Hall, — it was " Faneuil 
Hall open;" once it had been shut — it was last May — 
the sick old man — you remember the feeble look and the 
sad face, the tremulous voice. He came to solicit the vote 
of the Methodists, a vain errand. I felt then that it was his 
last time, and forbore to look upon that saddened counte- 
nance. 

The last time he was in the Senate, it was to hear his suc- 
cessor speak. He stayed an hour, and heard Charles Sum- 
ner demonstrate that the Fugitive Slave Bill was not good 
religion, nor good Constitution, nor good law. The old and 
the new stood face to face,- — the Fugitive Slave Bill and 
Justice. What an hour ! "What a sight ! What thoughts 
ran through the great man's mind, mingled with what re- 
grets ! For slavery never set well on him. It was a Nessus' 
shirt on our Hercules, and the poison of his own arrows 
rankled now in his own bones. Had Mr. Webster been true 
to his history, true to his heart, true to his intention and his 
promises, he would himself have occupied that ground two 
years before. Then there would have been no Fugitive 
Slave Bill, no chain round the court-house, no man-stealing 
in Boston ; but the " Defender of the Constitution," become 
the " Defender of the unalienable rights of man," would 
have been the President of the United States ! B"* he Had 
not the courage to deliver the speer^ J«= made ; no man can 

serve two masters, T****±-*> and Ambition. The mill of 

<Jud giinds slow but dreadful fine ! 

He came home to Boston, and went down to Marshfield 
to die. An old man, broken with the storms of State, Avent 
home — to die ! His neighbors came to ease the fall, to look 
upon the disappointment, and give him what cheer they 



107 



could. To him, to die was gain ; life was the only loss. 
Yet he did not wish to die : he surrendered, — he did not 
yield. 

At the last end, his friends were about him ; his dear ones 
— his wife, his son (the last of six children he had loved). 
Name by name he bade them all farewell, and all his friends, 
man by man. Two colored servants of his were there, — 
whom he had helped purchase out of slavery, and bless 
with freedom's life. They watched over the bedside of the 
dying man. The kindly doctor sought to sweeten the bit- 
terness of death with medicated skill; and, when that failed, 
he gave the great man a little manna which fell down from 
heaven three thousand years ago, and shepherd David gath- 
ered up and kept it in a psalm : " The Lord is my Shepherd : 
though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I 
will fear no evil ; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." 

And the great man faltered out his last words, " That is 
what I want — thy rod, thy rod ; thy staff, thy staff." That 
heart had never wholly renounced its God. Oh, no ! it had 
scoffed at His " higher law ; " but, in the heart of hearts, 
there was religious feeling still ! 

Just four years after his great speech, on the 24th of 
October, all that was mortal of Daniel Webster went down 
to the dust, and the soul to the motherly bosom of God ! 
Men mourn for him : he heeds it not. The great man has 
gone where the servant is free from his master, where the 
weary are at rest, where the wicked cease from troubling. 

" No further seek his merits to disclose, 

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode ; 
There they alike in trembling hope repose, 
The bosom of his Father and his God ! " 

Massachusetts has lost her great adopted son. Has lost ? 
Oh, no ! "I still live" is truer than the sick man knew: — 

" He lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes 
And perfect -witness of all -judging God." 






108 



His memory will long live with us, still dear to many a 
loving heart. What honor shall we pay ? Let the State go 
out mindful of his noblest services, yet tearful for his fall ; 
sad that he would fain have filled him with the husks the 
swine do eat, and no man gave to him. Sad and tearful, let 
her remember the force of circumstances, and dark tempta- 
tion's secret power. Let her remember that while we know 
what he yielded to, and what is sin, God knows what also 
is resisted, and he alone knows who the sinner is. Massa- 
chusetts, the dear old mother of us all ! Oh ! let her warn 
her children to fling away ambition, and let her charge them, 
every one, that there is a God who must indeed be worship- 
ped, and a higher law of God which must be kept, though 
Gold and Union fail. Then let her say to them, " Ye have 
dwelt long enough in this mountain ; turn ye, and take your 
journey into the land of Freedom, which the Lord your God 

giveth you ! " 

Then let her lift her eyes to Heaven, and pray : — 

" Sweet Mercy ! to the gates of heaven 
This statesman lead, his sins forgiven ; 
The rueful conflict, the heart riven 

With vain endeavor, 
And memory of earth's bitter leaven, 

Effaced for ever ! 



But 



-why to him confine the prayer, 

While kindred thoughts and yearnings bear, 
On the frail heart, the purest share 

With all that live ? 
The best of what we do and are, 

Great God, forgive ! " 












